NLHTP#17 The Advantage to Being Short Stacked & Calling PF AI Raises

[Red_Diamond]

Well, reading this chapter really surprised me how pro short-stack Miller was. I know that just about every time a short stack player comes to my table, it's not because they are great players and exploiting an intrinsic advantage, it's just that they are all-round horrible players.

But I am rather very courious. According to his thoery, I'm much better off putting 200$ down in a 5-10 game and just open-shoving 77+&AQ+ rather than playing in a 1-2 game.

Hmmmm....

I don't know, makes me wince a little. Especially when I have to play so tight, which means I'll be folding a lot of blinds. And that means just the SB & BB takes away 7.5% of my entire stack each pass without even completing the sb.

[wallenborn]

Since the strategic situation is symmetric, you should play against a short stack the same way the short stack would play against you. That makes playing as a short stack a little simpler since the shortie needs only one strategy, while the deep stack has to play against both deep and short stacks.

On the other hand, the same symmetry says that if you are uncomfortable with calling a shortie's push with AKo, likewise a short stack should probably not call a raise with AKo. Shows how tight correct short-stack play really is.

[Jurrr]

But if you're "open-shoving 77+&AQ+" and only getting called by hands that are ahead of that range then can a shortstack be profitable?

[Red_Diamond]

Alright, I did some more research tonight and it seems this 20BB SS goldmine (as lead to believe in the book) is really a little overzealous.

I read a response by Miller admitting that the strategy mentioned in this book, & outlined more in depth in his other book for newbs will be a losing strategy. He definitely states that buying in for 200 at 1000NL and using his outlined strategy will be -ev. However, he claims it was designed to make the game less -ev for new players.

But.......

He later states that if you buy in for a little more (20 to 30 BBs more making it 40 to 50BB total), and then use good HAND-READING SKILLS, and also do quite a few more changes to his automated rule-guide... then it COULD become +ev.

Now that's a lot to chew!

[wallenborn]

[ QUOTE ]
I don't know, makes me wince a little. Especially when I have to play so tight, which means I'll be folding a lot of blinds. And that means just the SB & BB takes away 7.5% of my entire stack each pass without even completing the sb.

[/ QUOTE ]

If i remember the short-stack chapter from GSIH correctly, the strategy heavily depends on your stack size. Sit down with 20BB, play short stack strategy, when your stack grows to over 30BB or shrinks to under 15BB, leave and repeat the trick at another table. Leaving a table after doubling up is something i see a lot from shorties, btw.

The narrowness of the useful stack size range makes me suspicious. What kind of opponents would widen that range, what kind would narrow it down? What kind of opponents would make the range disappear entirely?

For example, on the 25NL tables on Party Poker right now nobody open limps anymore. Many pots go to the PF raiser uncontested. Yesterday i saw a few tables with one or two shorties (~20BB), who would move in from late position against a 4BB raiser once every few orbits or so. Half of the time the raiser folds, and the shortie wins 5.5BB, the other half the hand is shown down, the shortie usually has a medium pair or AQs or so, and wins about half the time. I think this particular strategy is successful only if

[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] there are only a few shorties at the table, and
[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] the other deep stacks try to make money mainly by blind stealing and don't pick their spots well.

[Jurrr]

Why leave at 15BB? I'd stay until I am blinded away.

[wallenborn]

[ QUOTE ]
Why leave at 15BB? I'd stay until I am blinded away.

[/ QUOTE ]

Most shorties play like that, too. But i think the rationale behind is, with <10BB the blinds are eating up your stack too fast. You gain and lose chips two ways each:

<ul type="square">[*] + You push, everybody folds, you get the dead money.[*] + You push, get called by a deep stack, and double up.[*] - You pay blinds.[*] - You push, get called, and lose your stack.[/list]
To make the whole strategy profitable, the sum of these terms must be positive. The sum of the showdown terms is positive if you push with better hands on average than you get called with, which is a good assumption as long as your stack is short (with 100BB your all-in will be called by AA and KK, meaning you can push only with AA and KK, once every ten orbits). The actual size of the showdown contributions depends on how many chips you gain when doubling up, and if you're very short that'll just not be big enough often enough to compensate for the blinds. So if you are down to &lt;10BB, you have to rely on your pushes working as blind steals more often.

[Red_Diamond]

Just ran some numbers on this. AKo is -ev with the 77+,AQo+ range.

However, when lowing the dominated ace range to AJo+ the AKo now becomes a very small favourite.

Now I don't feel like I sucked out yesterday. :P


Also interesting, is if the short stack adds 22+ in his range, he actually is a better favourite vs the AK. That may somewhat be obvious. But it's going to hurt of course if he bigger stack lowers his PP calling range. 77 probably is the best cut-off against unknown players for this strategy.

[Jurrr]

0BB &gt;= x &lt;= 1BB is the sweet spot for a short stack. I'm not gonna bother proving that (as I don't know how) but I'm absolutely confident that short stack advantages are higher at 10BB than they are at 20BB.

[Etric]

[ QUOTE ]
0BB &gt;= x &lt;= 1BB is the sweet spot for a short stack. I'm not gonna bother proving that (as I don't know how) but I'm absolutely confident that short stack advantages are higher at 10BB than they are at 20BB.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is true.