[phydaux]

Ulkis,

Yes, you are correct when you say that poker is hard. But the shortie isn't playing poker. He's playing a differant game called "shove."

It's hand range vs hand range. Mr. McShove buys in for 20bb at a table where everyone else had 100bb. (That's the key point - That everyone else had a big stack and he doesn't.)

The big stackers are, for the most part, playing hands that rely on implied odds - Hands like SCs & suited gappers, small pairs, suited aces & kings, etc. Hand distrobution indicated that when a big stack enters a pot for a raise or calls a raise, it is far more likely that he's playing one of these implied odds hands rather than a big pair.

The shortie isn't playing implied odds hands. He's playing hands like AK, AQ, KQ & JJ+. And remember - most flops miss most players. So when the shortie shoves on the flop, even unimproved, the vast majority of the time he is likely to either have his opponent crushed or be just a very small dog.

So hand range plus fold equity makes it profitable in the long run for the shortie to shove any flop that he sees head's up. If you don't belive that, then why is your c-bet percentage so high? [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Yes, a good deep stack player can adjust his range and start to play top pair poker vs the shortie. But in doing so he's offering great implied odds to the other deep stack players at the table.

And that is the advantage that the shortie had over the deep stack player. The deep stack player has to play with the specter of the other deep stack players at the table felting him. He has to watch out for reverse implied odds and play four streets of poker.

Mr. McShove doesn't have to do that. By playing Shove, he only has to play two streets and doesn't have to worry about odds at all.



[i](If any group of hard core limit hold'em players ever got it into their heads to kill internet NL cash and drive all the fish back to limit hold'em, they could open a "boiler room," train 12-16 players to work in shifts, multi-tabling 16 tables of NL cash 24/7 on all the major poker sites across all limits. It wouldn't take long for a "MIT Poker Team" to kill the game and drive off the fish.)