Isn't it a bad idea to buy in for anything than less the max?

I saw a shortstacked guy hitting set over set, and he hardly made profit... besides you cannot deny anyone the odds to call if most of your money is already in the middle?

Originally Posted by DaFish

Isn't it a bad idea to buy in for anything than less the max?

I saw a shortstacked guy hitting set over set, and he hardly made profit... besides you cannot deny anyone the odds to call if most of your money is already in the middle?

You can argue both sides of this. Buying in short does potentially limit you wins but it also limits your losses, particularly in NL and I feel a lot of this applies to NL, and in some cases PL. Buying in deep stacked will mean your wins will be more substational and likewise with losses...

... I would say that its a good idea to buy in shortstacked to a new table since this allows you to get good reads on how the table is playing to start with and for the first say 50 hands you arent risking all your chips with a marginal hand against a player you only have little info on. Then once you have been at the table for a while... you can add more to your stack and start looking to bust people... Shortstacks have the advantage of being able to see all the cards for less.. for instance if you raise 50% of your stack preflop and the flop helps your cards even bettr then its worth sticking in the other 50% on the flop since youll get to see both cards if your called....shortstacks can be hard to play against because of this...

Short stacking in my opinion is very profitable if your willing to put the time in since it has such little risk, I sat down earlier on a 5c10c tbl on VC with $4, $2 on 2 tables and it took 3 hours but I left with $55.. it helps that the cards went my way but its just a helping example.

Ive seen people deep stack and wait for Aces/Kings get most of their money in the middle preflop and postflop and get outdrawn.... both have their good and bad sides...

i always buy in half-stacked NL double up and leave, its a fucking hit and run

the main reason i dont buy in full stacked is because i will start to value my BB less and say , oh well i still have 88 BB or whatever, i need to play tight but just right enough to stick my chips in and make a decent profit and i almost always leave once ive doubled up once and just go to another table.

I assume you mean for NL, for limit always buy in for 20-25 bigbets. There has been quite a bit of talk about short-stacking a couple of months back. This is how I approach it.

For NL you can play deepstack poker for the max buy-in, this can be a little bit tricky and requires some idea of how your opponents play. This comes down to implied odds where you look for people to stack playing for big hands, small pairs, suited connectors become more valuable and big cards and big pairs can become more dangerous. That is why reads are so important.

Short stack playing is the opposite it is pretty much all played pre-flop or on the flop. Big cards and big-pairs go wayy up in value, you are really just trying to flop top pair and go all-in against players with bigger stacks. You can often go all in pre-flop with your big hands JJ+ and sometimes AK, you'll be suprised at the crap that'll call you. To be effective at short-stacking you need to leave after you hit a set point say when you hit 40 or 45bbs you leave or else you are playing a different game. You can also easily start to go after the blinds when the better players adjust.

What I do is usually start out short-stacking (online, live I always buy-in for the max), buying in for 20 bbs and playing the basic all-in for basically all-in PF (depends on what the table will take), after a few orbits I can start to get an idea of their play and may or may not switch it up to playing deep-stacks if the table looks good.

the better i think i am at playing post flop than the other players, the more chips i want to have at the table.

Yeah yesterday I stole a big pot on the river, with AQ but it was garbage at that point, board had paired already and flush/straight was possible too. It would've been impossible against a short stack.

i like to buyin for 50BBs.. i find it alot easier to double up with 50BBs, then it is to make 50BBs with a 100BB stack.