Ive been seeing TONS of short stack players bursting into the online, as well as the live poker world. For the longest time i considered SS play a waste of time. For some time now i have been buying in half stacked in semi deep games, and doing fairly well.

i just wanted to gather some opinions on whether people consider short stack play good? or bad?.

Im leaning most certainly to good, concerning short stack play for my own personal reasons:

1) Image Manipulation is probably the most prevalent reason for buying in short stacked. Ive been getting tutored by some of the better choo choo players online, they always appear to be playing CRAZY! Absolutely continue, day in and day out, to look like maniac short stack fish, buying in half stacked everytime they sit down at the table. Obviously to some of the more table savvy people they pick up on this loose short stack entering in every pot. So they begin to start opening up their calling, raise, and 3bet ranges against these short stacks. To ones surprise, they get into a raise war either PF or on the flop, and the choo choo player ends up scooping the pot with a premium hand. The savvy DS player chalks it up to good timing for this SS fish to catch such a monster hand on him and continues to play supremely worse. Well further down the session it happens again! and again! and again!

The amazing thing to me is not how these short stackers can appear to be playing much more loose than they are, but how they [B]maintain[B] their stack size to be around even! (or slightly above in most cases) Obviously something that takes practice and mucho experience to pull off consistently. This leads me to something else i consider to be super beneficial.
(im sure we will be delving much deeper into this aspect of my argument)

2) SS play FORCES table savvy people to open up their range! Its super obvious i know, but when you force players to play in a way that isnt comfortable for them, its an advantage.

3)I understand the argument that playing short stacked dosent allow you to get the same value off of your premium hands as you would buying in 200bbs deep, but couldnt this same argument work on the opposite end? we know there is a great deal of short term luck involved in poker. we call it variance. lets say we set a stop-loss of 5BI's playing shortstacked. we either have the opportunity (if we understand good SS strategy) of going on an absolute slaughtering of the table, or we end up loosing 1 normal buyin of a deep stacked player. (this is running pretty bad obviously)

4) Ive found that (based off my personal experience SSing) the smarter people at the table tend to respect raises more often coming from SS's. Why?
I often hear people referring to SS's as "more reserved" players. This is a HUGE advantage to short stackers, as it allows them to take down pots that DS players usually cannot not. Obv the reverse is worked into the equation and Short stack players aren't respected at all. This TOO can be beneficial for obvious reasons!

all the points ive stated fit into one another, and it makes for a rather lucrative style of play. Obv i am still inclined to play some DS poker to spice things up, but im just kinda really into short stacking lately.

I feel the most basic idea to remember behind Short Stack play (imo) is to survive until you can double up. It allows you to be cautious with your roll and allows you to exploit table dynamics easier. (once again imo)

i would love to read some debates against SS play.

Good post.

well if u hitnrun it certainly can be profitable, but if u stay...many SS players are terrible when they get deep. Another downside is your variance is prolly high. Finally everybody hates short stackers so tables with too many of them are not attractive for 100bb+ players.

meh there's fuck all to do with image, it's mathematically unexploitable. i had a go at ongame 10bb shorting for like 5k hands as an experiment, the swongs are ridiculous and i didn't quite have my maths right for shoving ranges vs blinds, i'm sure i could get it correct given a little more time/effort but i put my hands through poker ev and my sklanksy bucks went straight up and my showdown winnings went straight down coz i run like arse..

it involves opening tiny from lp and folding to 3bets, and 3bet shoving over "relatively" large opens from lp when you're in the blinds/there are limpers, and a tiny bit of creative yet limited flop play. the pros (imsakidd and curtains) have their maths down pat and just have to crank out hands.

put simply, at a 6max talbe if you have 5 people with 100bb stacks and 1 guy with 20bbs, in the best interested of the fully stacked people they try and play correctly against each other which means the short stacker has an edge. if they try and adjust and play as if they have 20bb effective stacks, they get 3bet lite by those fully stacked and end up being -ev vs the other full stacks etc. if you put two shorties on the table the shorties dont have an edge vs each other and if anyone has a brain the table breaks fairly quickly.

but anyway there really is no debates against it apart from unethical/you're a cunt/short stacking penis etc, it's a guaranteed way to make money through pumping out a ridiculous amount of hands with a tiny edge. during my 5k hands i had 20 "buyin" (choo choo buyins) swings, so you're up for some ridiculous variance and big long term profit if you do it correctly.

fortunately/unfortunately (depending which way you look at it) your days are numbered with 50bb min tables on stars and small traffic at other networks, there are bots doing 10bb shorting at 888.com now at MSNL which is criminally unfair but apparently that will be stopped soon and the shorting days are probably over.

piv what do you think about half stackers and how to adjust to them with 100bb

I usually just sit on their right and steal slightly more

nice post piv.
ive heard of some of these SS bots.

to be fair we both know i dont mean 10bb SSing. but relatively around 20bbs. allows a little more give against DS opponents.

what would you consider a decent 3bet range AGAINST(assuming the player knows how to play a Short Stacker?) a SS? (im having trouble lately 4bet shoving because of this problem...

Originally Posted by OrionPro

well if u hitnrun it certainly can be profitable, but if u stay...many SS players are terrible when they get deep. Another downside is your variance is prolly high. Finally everybody hates short stackers so tables with too many of them are not attractive for 100bb+ players.

well the majority of which ARE in fact lousy playing Short Stacked. (which makes it far more profitable against DS's who assume Short Stackers cant play deep )

i think if one was to make the decision to play SS'd, they need to know how to eventually play consistently winning DS play.

shortstacking makes it easier, which in turn makes it harder to play against. Which is why we hate them.

orion, you're correct, sit on their right and play less 76s type hands and more K8 type hands to make top pairs and stack them that way, also you cant setmine vs them but you can raise pairs vs them still. to play 50bb stacks correctly at 6max i think you need to play something pretty FR nitesque like 12/9, most of them are like 40/10 bad so just play your normal game.

tripped, i really don't know, since i don't have any decent shorties in my games and never had to make the adjustment but i'd imagine as a very blanket statement that it'd be ok or at least neutral EV to 3bet/call with AJ+/66+. if you've got enough hands on a shorty have a look at their position stats in pt and from that you can calculate ranges and how you fair against it.

there was a good post in MSNL on 2p2 a while ago where the regs said they'd only sit at 50bb min tables and it gave some rough guidelines for how to play fairly correctly against shorties.

btw why are buyins capped anyways, is it to protect the fishies? It would be really cool if you could buyin much deeper; and would potentially help poker rooms too if rake is uncapped.