NLHE stack depth calculations for aggressive, short-handed tables.

[Albert Moulton]

I read and post mostly at SSNL, and some at MSNL.

I've noticed a lot of on-line 6-max and short-handed players raise and reraise much more often preflop with a much wider range of hands than full ring, especially full ring live.

QUESTION:

With a 100 x bb max buy-in, will a game that is ALWAYS open-raised to a minimum of 4xbb play as if it were 25xbb effective stacks instead of 100bb effective stacks? In essence, isn't this a game with two small blinds and a 4bb big blind?

And isn't this essentially a short-stack (or at least, 'medium' stack) game of poker?

This would explain a lot of debate I see where 6-max guys are frequently happy to reraise from the blinds preflop to a button raise with AJo, for example. At my 9-handed live game, for example, with >100 bb stacks, this would be chip spewing since button usually lets the blinds "chop" unless he has a hand, in which case he'll raise - and AJo is looking pretty bad OOP with deep stacks. On the other hand, maybe in what amounts to a 25bb stack game, AJo is looking pretty good - even OOP post flop?

[Albert Moulton]

Let me rephrase my question.

In a 100 big blind (bb) max buy-in No Limit Hold Em game, if the rules were such that there was a normal SB/BB blind structure, but no one could enter the pot except for making a 4 x bb "call" (a 3.5 bb "call" for the SB in an unraised pot, and a 2 x bb "call" for the BB in an unraised pot) how would that change the nature of the game?