full ring vs. 6 max

[dakevs]

i read somewhere that playing shorthanded will increase your results exponentially. basically, if you are a losing player when you play shorthanded, you will also be a losing player full ring, just at a slower pace. is that true? because i feel that i *could* be a winner at full ring, but i am horrible short handed.

[ceire]

Not really i know many players that can make a good profit from full handed but suck at short handed. However if you do have any bad habits they will be magnified in 6max games

[uDevil]

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basically, if you are a losing player when you play shorthanded, you will also be a losing player full ring, just at a slower pace. is that true? because i feel that i *could* be a winner at full ring, but i am horrible short handed.

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Sure there's a correlation, but not a perfect one. But I think it's stronger in the other direction: if you're a losing player in full games, you're likely to be an even bigger loser in short games.

Playing short-handed will expose weaknesses that aren't as significant in full-ring. Weak-tight and passive play will get punished more. You'll have to attack and defend the blinds more, and if you don't do it well you'll get hurt. Players are more tricky-- there's more bluffing and semi-bluffing. There are more decisions to make and they're more difficult because you don't have good information. That's good if you're good at it because making good decisions is the same as good play, so it's potentially more profitable. That also means the bad players will lose more, so that much is true.

In full-ring games, the play is more straightforward because you play more multi-way hands. Bluffing and semi-bluffing will not be as effective, so betting for value when you have a hand is more important. Bets and raises are more likely to represent good hands. You have more information and it will be more reliable, so it's easier to make decisions. More hands will go to showdown, and you'll need to have relatively strong hands to win.

[steeveg01]

depends on your style, if you are a very tight player,and like to play sit and goes ,play9-10 seats table,as blinds will be slower to come round so you see far more hands, if you play a bit loose and can play decent post flop game, 6 player tables probably better.i find you have to play a lot of marginal hands after the flop in a shorthanded game than you would play in a 10 seater table,some players tend to overplay ace low kicker a lot in 6 seater table,so take notes

[RitaNg123]

I think I generally like to play a tighter game, so I'm more comfortable at FR games. I find that it's a more consistent game for me, whereas with 6-max, table selection is a lot more important. I seem to either do pretty good, or pretty bad when I am playing shorthanded.

Sometimes what I do if I really want to play shorthanded (which is very rare) is to go down a level or two so that it's more for the experience and learning, and not quite as devastating if I lose. Because it's faster, and the variance is higher, I feel safer doing it this way.