FR Theory: Random thoughts on different stack sizes and playing them

[Phytopath]

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Hi Phytopath

I'd love to hear what you think are the benefits of 60BB then, and the reasoning behind it. And your experiences in playing 60BB too.


My take: I personally play it much like I'd play 100BB, and whilst it makes some decisions more obvious (ie it's more obvious to fold the worst of your raising hands - say 66 in mp2 - to a stiff 3-bet at 60BB than 100BB), these are not that hard decisions to come to at 100BB (imo) given plenty of experience/thinking. And I feel not playing 100BB leaves money on the table. However, I really do think people will more readily take the worst of it when they are against a 60BBer than a 100BBer.

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Well alot of the benefits are similar to what is discussed in PNL with the SPRs, especially when you are playing against okay (not awful but not good) opponents.

1st you can make a standard raise and get pretty close to ideal SPR for your overpair/TPGK type hands. In a NL100 game if you raise to 4 and get 1 caller you are looking at close to a SPR of 5. It makes it alot easier to play your hands aggressively and you don't really have to worry about getting stacked so much, you got the situation you wanted.

Also people stack off alot lighter and take the worst of it alot more against you, after I switched to starting playing 60bb alot of the regulars would stack off with TP medium kicker all the time, still calling my raises with the same ranges as before.

I am not sure exactly how it effects the play of sets, from what I have seen it doesn't diminish your returns as much as you would think. While you can't extract quite as much as you could at 100bb, but you are more likely to get your stack in and be called.

The other benefit for me is it really forces me to be more strict on my preflop hand selection, I can get tilty at times and with full stacks I can convince myself it is okay to try these big bluffs (which never work enough for me).

I was quite successful playing 100bb stacks before but believe that my winrates have increased slightly using primarily the 60bb style. It also allows me to play longer, less stressful sessions which are good for the win rate.