Buy-in v Stakes

[Anosmic]

As far as I undestand it we tend to describe NLHE tables by the buy-in (i.e. $5NL) and LHE by the stakes (so $5/10 ).

Now I was playing with my new copy of PokerOffice and noticed that my games from Titan POker were classidied at ($0.05/$0.10). I thought this was irritating at first, but then today when I came to find a table the only non-empty types had a max buy-in of $5.

So it's sort of like $5NL, but the stakes are like my normal $10NL games on Party.

What difference does this make? I mean, it means the blinds are proportionately higher, is this bad? I can't see why except that it increases your risk (doubles it from "normal" $5nl) but halves the possible reward (except it doesn't because after a while there's at least a third of the table with 2 buy-ins in their stack).

I mean a lot of people here are very against playing as half-buy-ins, but in a sense everyone is on these tables.

[Renton]

shallow stacks are good because they make hands like AK, KQ, and QJ go up in value.

shallow stacks are bad because they make hands like 22-99 and 45s-78s practically worthless.

Play in a 100bb game.

[Iwind]

Deep stacks favours the better post-flop players, and that is usually the better players. So if you believe you get a skill edge in the game, go for a deep stacked game.