[Triggerle]

The stack sizes chapter is really straightforward so there's not much to discuss. I wrote down a few words on short stacking opponents anyway:

General thoughts
A situation we are faced with quite often is short stack opponents. At our levels theses are very rarely good players. Most are in fact extremely bad players. Their motivation for short stacking is often that they don't want to lose too much money (here's a hint: not playing at all will lose you even less money) or that they don't have a sufficient roll to buy in full.

In any case, even when we are faced with extremely bad players we need to adjust properly. I we make -EV plays even the fact that our opponent is bad won't help us.

Pre-flop
The first adjustment we need to make pre-flop is that we need to take quite a few hands out of our range if we are against a short stack. Suited connectors and low pocket pairs, hands that rely on implied odds, often become unplayable against shorties. We can still raise them when we open the pot but we must be aware that instead of a semi-bluff our hand is now almost a complete bluff. If Mr. Short is unlikely to fold on the flop it is usually better to just fold pre-flop.

This is even more true for calling a raise with pocket pairs. Here's an example that is maybe a bit extreme because our hand has at least some showdown value even unimproved. I chose it this way to maybe get disagreeing views:

SB: $61.30
Hero (BB): $68.85
UTG: $16.50
MP: $53.55
CO: $41.95
BTN: $20.00

Preflop: Hero is dealt 8[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] 8[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] (6 Players)
3 folds, <font color="red">BTN raises to $1.75</font>, SB folds, Hero folds

Since the short stack was an unimaginative player but would almost certainly cbet the flop we would automatically be in a commitment situation without knowing anything about our opponent's hand. We can't play for set value because he is too short.

Post-flop
Stack sizes also influence our post-flop play. If we raise a good hand pre-flop and only a short stack calls us it can frequently be wrong to cbet if we miss. This is because we would put so much money in the pot by cbetting that we cross the commitment threshold. This is a very common leak even among otherwise solid aggressive players.

Another example where stack sizes come into play is if we flop a very good but vulnerable hand and we have a short stack and a big stack in the hand. Before betting we should look at the remaining stack of the shortie. If we bet more than half of his remaining stack then if he comes over the top we can't 3bet because the rules don't let you re-raise if the previous raise was too small due to an all-in. This could be a disaster on drawy boards if the other big stack comes along because he now gets odds to draw and we can't re-raise him.

There's no need to be afraid of bad shortstacks. We just have to adapt properly. This can mean to surrender pots to them that we would normally not so readily surrender. The good thing is that since we still cover them we will eventually get all of the surrendered pots back along with the rest of his stack sooner or later.