[DcifrThs]

unethical or not, its within the current rules.

upside: may cause opponents to call bets with hands that they would have otherwise folded. bounded losses.

downside: bounded wins. difficulty protecting your hands on the flop (depending on "shortness" of buy in and action at the table)

from where i see it, if you expect to win more than your fair share then this strategy would need to make-up these losses with gains in terms of increased hand range calls vs. the short stack bets.

so at lower limits where the money is less and players poorer, the short buy may be more profitable than at the higher limits like 50/100 and 1/2nl where players adjust to it well. but the overall profitability may suffer at the lower limits b/c you could have even more money to cover the poorer players and profit from their likely sizable mistakes.

at the mid limits, it seems that at the mid limits we see the "optimal limit" to play short stacked in terms of average opponent skill level. probably at like 5/10-20/40 there are many players for which it may be more profitable to play short stacked than full buy. they may be close to breakeven with high variance and would have small dollar valued swings and higher expectation w/ the short buy strategy.

at the higher limits, players understand opponents' thought processes better on average so the short buy strategy would need to be implemented with a good deal of randomness and skill to be profitable against the good players at those levels. vs. the gamblers at those levels though it will be profitable, but again, not as profitable as having more to cover them. it keeps you out of trouble playing a very big stack vs. other good players at the table also though.

just some thoughts.

Barron