Hypothetical Question

[NL__Fool]

Lets say you are playing 50NL and you are a proven winner.

You want to move up but can't for whatever reason you, ie; Not a big enough bankroll, or it's to big a leap and you play scared.

IF you took your 50 buy in and instead decided to play 100 NL with a 50 BB stack would your hourly rate suffer?

If you were making 5 PTBB/100 at 50NL would your winrate be cut in half? You only need to make 2.51 PTBB/100 at 100NL to have an increase in your hourly rate, and if your winrate dropped to only 4 PTBB/100 your hourly rate would increase by $3 for every 100 hands played.

Yes you would not be earning the maximium possible if your nut hand ran into someone who would be willing to lose his stack with an overpair or something but you also would not have made anymore if this happened at 50Nl with a full stack instead of 50 BB at 100NL.

What about 70 BB stacks?

[1Cowboys]

as a rule i would only play with a full stack.. i see a LOT of people at stars $100 that buy in short.. some as low as $20 and just push over top of a raise with what they deem to be "good cards" ill usually look them up with less than ideal hands though..

I would recommend that if you 4 table the $50 do 1 table of $100 and see how it goes (buy in full).

[Jim14Qc]

[ QUOTE ]
as a rule i would only play with a full stack.. i see a LOT of people at stars $100 that buy in short.. some as low as $20 and just push over top of a raise with what they deem to be "good cards" ill usually look them up with less than ideal hands though..

I would recommend that if you 4 table the $50 do 1 table of $100 and see how it goes (buy in full).

[/ QUOTE ]

That's exactly why you would WANTO to play shortstacked in a game where you are underrolled. Looking them up is probably the worst strategy against GOOD shortstackers (thats obviously not the case often, so it is probably the good strategy against bad shortstackers). The best strategy playing shortstacked at somewhat low levels is to patiently pay the blinds (I rebuy the blinds just before paying them) with (for me, at least) 40ish BB's behind and waiting for premiums (AQs+, AKo, QQ+) and raise/3betting all-in preflop. It's actually probably the best strategy for someone of only okish skill and the best strategy for sure when your opponents are better than you.

You can easily get it all-in on the flop with AA if you raise preflop and get a call from someone with AQ+ or 88+ (flop-dependant) and have a short stack. THat's very much +EV.

Just because the short stack doesn't charge you much to see the hand doesn't mean you should look them up (if the player is good), since you're not getting any implied odds. If he has what he's representing (I see no reason to bluff as a shortstack, for the reason that people look you up, which is why it's very +EV), there's no way you can make up for the -EV preflop play you make.

Anyways, as for moving up to NL100, I agree you should wait untill you are rolled for it. At low stakes like this, villains are pretty bad a lot of the time and buying in full is better than shortstacking for a good player. I'd rather be in a NL50 game with full buy-in than in a NL100 game with a 40-50$ buy-in.

If you indeed are a winning NL50 player, you should be able to grind it up to $1500 or so quickly and can start taking shots at NL100, slowling making a complete transition.

I too was first uncomfortable with the $ amounts involved in NL100 (I'm 18, so 100$ on a hand all-in is sort of a lot at first), if you're a winning player you'll get used to it with time. This is a good reason to short it though, imo. I took 40 buy-ins to NL200 back when I was playing NL50 and starting NL100 just to get used at seeing big $ amounts. If you're truly uncomfortable with having $100 on the table, I suggest buying it at 50$ on hand, and then increasing by $10 per 1k hands (one day or so?) or something similar. Also, in my experience, moving up from NL100 to NL200 is not as scary in terms of the $ increasing. NL50 -> NL100 was, for me, the biggest leap so far (I'm at NL100-NL200).

I feel like this post is extremely disorganized but I'll hit submit anyway. I hope it was of some help.

[Alchemist74]

If you play on multiple tables, drop 2 of the NL50 tables and add 1 NL100 so you've still got the same amount of money in play and you also reduce your varience. Worked for me [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]