NL with ratholing: adjustments

[Siegmund]

As the title says: suppose you are playing in a NL game where it is explicitly allowed to put money on or take money off the table between hands. Theoretically you could choose your stack size before every deal (and we'd need rules for what order people choose their stack sizes) but in practice it's not that often people would make adjustments.

**The purpose of this thread is NOT to ask if you'd like to play in such a game, or ask if you think such a game is a good idea**

My question is - if faced with such a rule, in the NL games you are currently playing, how would you change your strategy to take advantage of it?

[alphatmw]

couldn't this simply be rephrased to "what is the ideal stack size?"

[guy4565]

The situation I see either wanting to be extremely large stacked or alternately short stack double/triple up amount is exactly one of our donk home games after the friday night tournament. We have 3 regulars that lose in excess of 800.00 each evening, but will all 3 call any all in bet with any suited connectors, chase any ace to the river, and go with any pair to the river. Of course you can't play the same stack they have, they'll all call it to the river on any gutshot draw. What would be your preference, short stack all in and double or triple through them then play with their money,(guess this would be the ideal situation with such loose players to take your win off the table and then go back for more) or 20x their stack and just attack with good hands as normal, knowing you are going to be playing your aces against 3 or 4 callers. As usual, the complaints that it is harder to play against bad players, but it really shouldn't be, I know this kind of trailed off from the intent of the post, but I think it relates.

[gull]

Buy in for one bb in the BB and one sb in the SB.

[Siegmund]

My personal motivation for it is exploring the idea of a duplicate poker tournament - which requires not only that the cards be dealt the same at each table, but also that your stack sizes for each hand vary according to some pattern other than your result on the previous deal (those of you who are familiar with duplicate bridge will recall the cycle of vulnerabilities, instead of carrying forward games and partscores from previous hands at your own table.)

More generally, I am interested in ways 'to make every deal equally important' in a poker game... one of the ways that comes to mind is allowing for the imbalances caused by big NL pots to be adjusted before the next deal. I am not sure this really would be much different than spread limit with some moderately large but not huge spread... but I was kicking around the idea of 'imposing the caps' between hands rather than during the betting.

[jtr]

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Buy in for one bb in the BB and one sb in the SB.

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Genius. (Not joking.)

[AKQJ10]

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[ QUOTE ]
Buy in for one bb in the BB and one sb in the SB.

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Genius. (Not joking.)

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That's a good point. I had forgotten about that aspect, that you can nullify position that way. If I happen to run my stack down in a standard NLHE at a point where I'm close to the blinds, I'll defer my rebuy until I get the button. This way I'd just do the same each orbit.

But if everyone plays the blinds this way, then UTG should do the same because the only two players on whom she has position, SB and BB, are now short-stacked. She doesn't want to have the worst position among the deep stacks. And ditto UTG+1, and so on. So Button could buy in deep, but it wouldn't matter because CO would want to be short stacked to avoid giving him the advantage.

So yes, ratholing would make a huge difference if people knew what they were doing.

[antistuff]

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Buy in for one bb in the BB and one sb in the SB.

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this was my first thought too.

[mvdgaag]

what hands do you play? If you select hands and loose some you'll loose some big blinds. The most you can win is a few big blinds. I think this does not only nullify position, but also all and any skill. You get to choose preflop to either loose one BB or gamble for the pot. That's all you can do. I think it's just stupid and certainly improfitable.

[creedofhubris]

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Buy in for one bb in the BB and one sb in the SB.

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this was my first thought too.

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Why not buy in for a small blind at the big blind?

You'd want some sort of optimal stack for the other positions of course.