Buying into a cash game

[van.dog]

-1 for reading comprehension. I believe I said don't expect to "hit it big".

Van.dog, your post is so bad it isn't even funny. You buy in for half, sit and wait for an opportunity to "hit it big", but then only hit half as big as you could. This is just plain dumb.

By the way, the way you phrased your reply makes you look like a big douchebag.

My reading conprehension is fine tyvm. What you said was that you didn't expect to hit it big every time. Your next sentence was "Sit and wait and the opportunities come". Opportunities for what? Hit it small? As for sounding like a douchebag I can see how my post would do that as I made some pretty harsh comments so let me further explain my thoughts.

If you are playing poker to improve and move up in stakes you need to get better at all aspects of play. This includes such concepts as deep stack plays, controlling SPR through the river, etc. When you buy in for less than a full stack it makes it harder to work on any of these as you will be shortstacked when many of these situations come up and will therefore be pot committed by the turn.

Secondly, for those that say they buy in short because they don't feel comfortable playing with a full stack at that level then I would suggest you move down to a level where losing a buy in doesn't greatly affect you from an emotional perspective. One of the purposes of bankroll management is to allow players to play games at levels where they feel comfortable when buying in full. If you don't feel comfortable with 20-30 buy ins then wait till you get to 50 buy ins to move up. This will help you by allowing you to play hands further and will also allow you to play against stacks shorter than yours so when you do meet people playing specific short stack strategies you will know how to handle them.

My point is that if you don't learn to play all streets of a hand proficiently your struggles will grow as you move up in stakes.

Additionally, losing full stacks to coolers, bad beats, etc. is part of the game so if you are not comfortable losing a full stack then you are playing too high imo.

Thanks for the clarification. I take back the douchebaggery comment. I wasn't clear when I said wait for opportunities. I should have said wait for opportunities to play +EV poker instead of the lottery poker that the OP was describing.