Calling light vs short stacks

[AceLuby]

OK, so first off I want to say I'm a regular donkament player and have made most of my $$$ playing those. Not huge winnings, but enough to start a small BR. Anyway, I'm now starting to play cash games to work on my deepstack skills, but am starting to see how profitable cash games are. I'm starting out in NL25 6-max for now, but plan on moving up soon as the game seems ridiculously easy to beat. Anyway, I want to know if it is common to call light from ultra short stacks.

An example would be say you are sitting around a buy in and a half (biggest stack at the table) and there are 2 or three guys at your table with 20-30 BB's. Say one of them raises on the button in your BB w/ 20 BB's. I've been calling down with anything suited, PPs, any face card, or any one gappers or smaller and trying to outflop them. If I check to them they usually put in about 1/2 their stack on the c-bet and raising them either puts them in or makes them fold because it puts them in. I have taken about a buy in from ultra short stacks in the last day or so using this and I want to know if this is common. Are there any links for playing players that buy in for 20-30 BB's when you have 200+?

[Sir Winalot]

Welcome to cash. 6-max is definetly the way to go.

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Say one of them raises on the button in your BB w/ 20 BB's.

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A little confusing. Is the shortie pushing his 20bb or making a normal raise and having 20bb behind?

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Are there any links for playing players that buy in for 20-30 BB's when you have 200+?

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I don't see how you having 200bb's matters. IMO it's not that big of a psychological factor in cash games that it might be in tournaments. The effective stacks are only 20-30bb and you having anything above that doesn't really matter.

[eigenvalue]

I wouldn't play short stacks the way You do. Why?
To play speculative hands like SCs, suited 1-gappers or low pairs, You need huge implied odds. So You need a big stack to get these odds. But short stacks don't give You these odds. I play reasonable hands only against them unless there is at least one player involved in a hand with a huge stack. Then I try to play speculative hands, too.

Instead, I try to get short stacks all-in with my very strong hands by betting something like 1/3 to 1/2 of their stack size. For example in NL $25, if I have AA or KK UTG and 2 players with $4 and $5 are sitting at my table, I raise to $2. I reraise them the same way if they limp in front of me. My raises are unreasonable high, but these players like to gamble for their whole stack and I often find a caller or I get reraised all-in by them. Paytime!

[AceLuby]

So I think I need to be more specific:

1) I have 200+ BB's
2) Villain has 23 BB's and raises 4xBB w/ 19 BB's behind

3) I play pretty laggy and look for tables that will profit from this, ie high % to flop, but low $ avg/pot. This is a table that is passive PF, but also does not like to pay PF w/out prems. Als low $ avg/pot means a c-bet will take down a pot often. So I come in pretty light often

4) The reason I do this (call shorties light) is because they raise w/ 66-TT the same and if I out flop them it costs them their entire stack and if not it costs me 4 BB's and I can outflop these type of hands ~30% of the time and they rarely let these go

Please show me the error in my ways, or is this ok?

[Quester]

The bottom line is that you're not getting the proper implied odds from short stacks, so you should tighten up your play against them. If you know they raise light, then by all means loosen your range against them but do it with hands that don't need to improve much to win. I'm folding hands like 87s against a short stack.

[Panthro]

I follow the 5/10 rule for playing PPs and SCs against "shorties". I mean if they put in a PF raise that's 20% of their stack (basically telling me their committed to the hand), I try and avoid getting involved without goot PPs or strong broadway cards.

[AceLuby]

I guess it was stacking people off on their 77,66 & AK while doing this w/ TJs, Q8s, & 78o respectively. I'll try to get that out of my game, because I'm sure it was just getting really lucky. These short stacks have a plan of attack and I was trying to exploit it. They try:

1) to buy in for much less than the table avg
2) wait for a top 10-20% hand
3) try to double up w/ that hand

What I was trying to exploit is that they are often going in w/ a marginally good holding (ie 22-99, KQs, KJs) and are trying to see 5 cards w/ it w/out paying a whole buy in and try to play only PF and flop poker instead of deepstack cash game poker. I was trying to throw a wrench in this and mix it up, maybe it has purposes, probably not, but just wanted to bring it up and maybe discuss it.