high stakes pwnage thread

[Lukie]

You need to work on your game selection. IMSAKIDD will eat you alive.

Seriously, though. Is he a winning player? I can't figure out how shortstacking can actually make money in today's game climate.

Shortstackers have an inherent advantage over the rest of the table. It shouldn't be very hard at all for him to be a winning player (he is) if he's halfway decent (he is).

I've heard about this advantage, but I don't quite buy that it makes winning easier. Getting raped by the blinds is a huge disadvantage. Of the 50k+ hands I've played as a shortstack, I'm a big loser.

Maybe I played wrong, though. I thought I played right according to all the 'right' information, but maybe that's wrong. What are Imsakidd and Kurosh's vpip/pfr?

getting raped by the blinds is not a huge disadvantage, it's just part of the game. the advantage is that the game now has 20bb effective stacks for you ALWAYS, where the other players 1) are typically trying to play optimally for 100bb stacks, and 2) generally don't play nearly as well for 20bb effectiv even if they tried to. Some even have a horrible misconception that you can't make money shortstacking. I personally think it makes winning easier because the decisions are much simpler than in a deeper game. On the same token though these tougher, deep-stacked decisions are exactly what makes very good deeper stacked players have the ability to have a much higher win-rate than a shortstacker.

I sincerely doubt you were playing with all the 'right' information; info out there typically isn't very good for poker at all and there is even less good info out there for shortstacking. Which is actually a very good thing because good ones just make games worse. As far as their vpip's/pfr's they are probably a lot laggier (relatively) than you think, maybe 18/16 or something. That range and how you would optimally play with those stacks is far different than if you were playing deeper, though.