M2TR shortstacker illuminati thread

[Steelerman]

For a change-up and because I've been reading this thread I played the Ed Miller SS strategy with a few modifications today at NL25. I crushed it for like 12ptbb over a few thousand hands but I'll admit I ran very well. By running well though I mean that I didn't get sucked out on. I don't think I put a beat on anyone all day.

It was stupid how people were playing against me and how they just gave their money away. I raise with QQ...the flop comes J84...I go all-in and get called by QJ. Someone raises, I 3-bet all-in with AKs, get called by KJ. This just happened over and over.

This was my first time shortstacking and I usually just laugh at how horrible all the shortstackers are at NL25 (calling raises and folding the flop, etc.). I know I can't run this well all the time but even after a few thousand hands it's blatantly obvious I can get my money in as a massive favorite over and over again at this level with no effort whatsoever. Nice change of pace.

[Paul Thomson]

Teacher:

are u a robot? if not, do u feel like a robot? if so, how do u remember to recharge every night?

[bottomset]

lmao at the Teacher: parts

[MyTurn2Raise]

steelerman,
congrats!
Ed Miller's shortstacking work is excellent at being a primer. It will put you in a good spot to beat weak competition, but it doesn't include the adjustments to beat advanced competition.

What I've already written and will have finished soon will be enough to beat most 400NL and 600NL 6max games on the internet.

You'll need to adjust verse competition that doesn't call 3 bets with KJ too often.

[MyTurn2Raise]

[ QUOTE ]
Teacher:

are u a robot? if not, do u feel like a robot? if so, how do u remember to recharge every night?

[/ QUOTE ]

my only weakness is hungry and sleep

[MyTurn2Raise]

LESSON 3: Hand Ranges to Play


Yuck...who really cares? I understand a desire to be told to play xxxx UTG and xxxxx MP, but I've found it to be pretty pointless. Find any reasonalbe TAGish opening hand chart and just go with it. Personally, I used the work of BigJim and AZK in the thread teaching Punter11235 to play 22/16. There are numerous qualified guides out there.
CUT and BUT range are highly dependent on the players left to act. I'm sure you could just make a chart and go with it every time, but you'll be giving up ev by not adjusting to exploit villain tendencies.

There are a few adjustments that are really important however:

1) You need to adjust a bit so that your hands are better at going to and winning showdowns. This ties into discussions in Professional No Limit Holdem on hands to play with SPRs around 4.

2) You need to adjust a bit so that your hands stand a better chance in calling an all-in if someone 3-bets your opening raise.


Alltogether, just about any TAG opening range will be just fine. Just keep in mind the slight adjustments you should make.

[MyTurn2Raise]

LESSON 3A: Responding to the 3-bet

OK, so you open and then the opponent 3-bets you preflop. Whether it's more than your stack or not, you should respond as though it is a shove, because nearly any call on your behalf is a pot-commitment.

There is a really simple way to respond to this. It's a simple math problem that is very much like things we've seen in the poker literature regarding MTTs.

For example, look at pages 206 through 213 in NLTAP by Sklansky and Miller--"Callin All-In Raises". So, you should know what you have. You must estimate the range of hands your opponent would 3-bet. Then, it's just a pot odds calc to see if your hand has enough EV to call. Now, I'd suggest you use more breakdowns (both hand ranges and pot odd calcs) than Sklansky and Miller, but they set the perfect standard of what to look at and how to apply it. Boring, methodical charts....sigh. The only excitement is trying to accurately tease out the villain's hand range.

[MyTurn2Raise]

LESSON 4: Opening up in the Small Blind

Actually, I've publicly opened up this can of worms elsewhere. For those that don't know, HajiShirazu had a blog that dealt in part with shortstacking. He posted his guidelines for playing from the small blind, and I commented how one can improve on his guidelines just looking at push/shove charts. The thought came to be this past December/January time frame. I was reading The Mathematics of Poker by Chen and Ankenman. They had a simple equilibrium push/fold chart for SB/BB confrontations and also discussed how big the exploitive plays could be in this area. To figure out exploitive plays, one could use the formula I posted in the first lesson and just use R=0. Well, Haji took my little comment and ran with it. Here is his full post availbale on his blog posted April 16th, 2007.
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In response to Myturn2raise’s comments, as well as the desire to ensure that this site is the best available resource for short stack strategy, I decided to walk to the library, download SNG Wizard, and take another look at the ranges for 10bb pushing in late position. Man, was I surprised!

I gave hero a 10bb stack, with everyone else having more, and changed the setting from $ mode to chip equity mode, since in cash games, chip equity equals dollar equity, while SNG Wizard was originally designed for SNG’s. From there it’s simply plug in opponent ranges and see what comes out. There is however, one flaw in these calculations that I don’t like, that being the fact that there is no rake. In reality the ranges are going to be a little tighter than this given that you lose 5% of the pot when called.

Anyway let’s start with SB vs. BB, 9.5bb left after posting the small:

BB Call Range 28% or less: Push with any two cards

30%: Top 83%

35%: Top 61%

40%: 50%

50%: 43%

60%: 46% (it goes up past here)

Obviously I have been playing way too tight SB vs. BB. Getting a read on what kind of player the BB is is important, because the correct push range differs greatly between 25% and 50% calling, although that’s certainly no easy task.

Now for the button, same as before, 10bb stack with blinds covering:

SB call 10%/BB call 15: Top 75%

15/15: Top 49%

15/20: 35%

20/20: 28%

20/25: 24%

25/25: 23%

25+/30+: 23%+

Although I am not going to type the ranges out myself, because that’s mind-numbingly boring, top 23% is any ace, any pair, KJ, any two suited broadways, and T9/98s. So you should definitely be pushing these from the button at the bare minimum. To look up what “Top x%” is, use Pokerstove.

Now for the cutoff:

Button 10%/SB 10%/BB 10%: Top 27%

10/10/15: Top 20%

15/15/15: 14%

15/15/20: 14%

20/20/20: 14% and so on

Pushing with this somewhat wider range of hands is going to add greatly to your swings, since you’ll be playing more all-in pots with small edges/the worst hand, but rest assured that these are indeed profitable plays, not withstanding the rake. Many of these hands do horribly if called, but remember that 1.5bb is 15% of your stack, and you’re never that big an underdog unless you run into a big pair. These aggressive pushes will also give you more action on your early position shoves, which should of course be with premium hands.

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I shared this info with some right away. I know from datamines that Mrs. Grimstarr took the info and was a winning shorty open-pushing upto 90% of his hands in the small blind for awhile at the mid-stakes games on FTP until the regulars finally adjusted.

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.... I can only laugh at myself now for not drawing the dots together when I was terrorizing the OnGame 10BB buyin games. I was still a winner there playing a very poor form of shortstacking. I only regret I was too slow to realize I could have so much more change. Ironically, AceAnything on OnGame told me as much in chat one day.

Funny enough, I received Kill Everyone by Streib, Nelson, and Lee as soon as I could and there is a discussion in that book on both the topic of steal pushes in blind v blind and resteal charts.

Ummmm.... This isn't to say the open-pushing small blinds is the optimal solution though. The two poker books I mentioned in this book say it is optimal upto 13BBs. However, you will often be dealing with 20BBs. The issue is that most of you shorting will not be as good as your opponents at 400NL 6max and up. (There is a reason you're shorting, right?) The loss of playing push/fold instead of small raise is minimal and might be none at all if your opponents can outplay you postflop.

[NT=TOOLBOX]

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LESSON TWO: WHO SAYS IT HAS TO BE A 2-STREET GAME?

So, back in April if I remember right, Imsakidd PMs me about shortstacking after reading 2p2 and seeing that I made some good money the previous summer. The Kidd explains that he's been making alot at 6max and I should look into it. Skeptically, I start to play....yahtzee! Than, Cardrunners has a video where one of their studs talks about how much he hates shortstackers, but that he respects 40putts as the best shortstacker in the game. Woohoo!

40putts is on FTP and it's time to set the datamining machine into effect.

The very first thing that sticks out is that 40putts minraises almost every time preflop. WTF? Isn't minraising bad? Well, I'll tell you why he does it. I imagine that you will think it's obvious after the fact as I did. I only laughed at myself for being such a crappy poker thinker that I did not realize it myself.

If you watch the competent shorties today, you'll see very very few instances where they open for more than 3X BB. Imsakidd and myself regularly open 2.5X. 40putts remains a 2X fiend.

So, think about why one raises preflop?
In NLTAP, Sklansky and Miller list 6 reasons:
1. For value
2. For isolation
3. To steal the blinds
4. To semi-bluff
5. For deception
6. To manipulate pot size

I don't think 2p2ers need to be reminded how important some of this is. Just look at Pokey's posts on blind stealing and PT profits to see how important that aspect is.

The problem with opening up big is that other players can exploit the shortie by shoving 20BBs in the middle just as the shortie does to the fullstacks in resteal situations. Just look at skier5's recent post as of this morning to see some fullstackers have figured that out.

However, the good news is the shortie can effectively open up for a smaller raise. For one, think implied odds. Go back and read Goofyballer's work on suited connectors or Dan Bitel's PSA on these are the implied odds you need. With fullstacks, one has to raise a decent amount to not allow other fullies to use the 5/10 rule against them. However, it is not near that important for a shortstack. If a shortstack has 20BBs and raises 2.5BB to open, he is already above and beyond 10% of his stack!

In addition, just think in terms of SPR (stack-to-pot ratio) first discussed in PNLHvI. A shortie raises to 2.5 and is called after starting with 20BBs. The stack is now 17.5 compared to a pot of 5 to 6. That is a very easy SPR to play. It's quite easy to get all the money in if that is what the shorty wants to do. There is no rule that it should be all in on the flop. To play allin by time the flop betting is done means the shorty has to start with a ridiculously tight range in order to ensure that s/he will be way ahead even after the flop so often. With an SPR below 4, it shouldn't be hard for the shorty to get it in, but it still allows some play after the flop.

All of this allows shorties to have dynamic ranges. It makes counter-plays much more difficult for competent fullies as they cannot be sure that the 876r flop missed the shorty. This allows the shorty to actually play poker and use blind steals, position, aggression, etc. Shortstacks limit the importance of position, but it doesn't completely eliminate it.

For instance, by opening smaller, a shorty can effectively raise 25% and up on the button and follow up with 3/5 pot c-bets quite often.

If you do the datamines of the successful 6max shorties, you'll see their stats are only slightly tighter than the normal TAG on general. Their hand range is still quite large.

Now, some will fear being 'outplayed' postflop. That is still an issue. We'll get to some stuff on this in a later lesson. However, the shorty should familiarize her/himself with common equity calculations for hands v range on different types of flops. YOu'll find that as long as you're not atrocious, it's tough to make that big of a mistake postflop. After all, there are not many BBs in play and you should have some semblence of how to play poker postflop and how to read opponent ranges.

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mind blown =(

[1p0kerboy]

teacher:

Are you saying that with >13BB, which is what we will normally have, we should be opening the pot from the small blind with a normal sized "shortstack" raise of 2.5-3BB, and then deciding how to play the pot from that point? (If we think we have at least equal skill as our opponent postflop).