Live buyin strat

I remember reading some review on a new "crush live poker" type of book a few months ago where the author describes buying in for only like 40-50BB's at any new table. That's all I remember about the article and never really gave it much consideration until now. Does anyone have any insight into this? Any reasons for or against it?

edit: Ok I found the book -> Donkey Poker written by Steve Selbrede.

The reason for buying in for 50BB's are as follows:

He thinks he doesn't "need a particularly deep stack to generate sufficient implied odds for speculative hands."

A smaller stack makes it easier for him to play disciplined, tight poker

Some people will see it as weakness when he buys in short

He can size raises to make set mining unprofitable for opponents who call his raises to set mine

Bad players who call loose PF for implied odds (with speculative hands) won't have those implied odds as often against him

His stack size will usually increase which means he will widen his range during the session which can help him when his opponents still assume he is playing tight

Postflop play is simpler with a shorter stack (He uses pocket aces postflop as an example of playing too aggressively postflop and having it backfire when you have a bigger stack; with a smaller stack he will lose but not enough to counter his winnings)

Position is not as important when stacks are shorter; with deeper stacks you will have to play every round carefully

If you're not that good of a player, a deep stack will only be more costly to you because you'll lose more when you make mistakes. Stacks that are not deep give those players less variance. Deeper stacks require more skill which these players won't have.

And to some degree it helps limit losses playing against unknowns who may be notorious trappers/nits whom you might otherwise punt your stack into with an overpair or whatever.

He goes on to say that buying in full/deep is good for good players, but if you're average you may want to reconsider.

I think it just gives you worse implied odds with set hunting and stuff like that, and you also end up getting in weirder/worse spots pre.

If the fish have 50bb and the good players all have 100 go ahead and buyin for 50 though.

Generally you want to be deeper with the edge

don't be that guy

this sounds like misdirection to help create fishy players while selling books

On October 09 2015 18:59 NewbSaibot wrote: He thinks he doesn't "need a particularly deep stack to generate sufficient implied odds for speculative hands." Bad players who call loose PF for implied odds (with speculative hands) won't have those implied odds as often against him Postflop play is simpler with a shorter stack (He uses pocket aces postflop as an example of playing too aggressively postflop and having it backfire when you have a bigger stack; with a smaller stack he will lose but not enough to counter his winnings)

i mean what's he really saying here. that he can double his 40bb playing suited connectors and doesn't count all the times his stack dribbles away and he has to buy-in again because he's not disciplined enough to play a full buy-in

the only time you should buy in short is if you spent the rest of your money on a room at the hotel

Most likely he is too aggressive with his ranges and because of that, versus unknowns, he has no idea what is happening in the hands. Basically just hoping to run good. So, he believes that using shorter stacks and pushing his tight ranges vs spazzy fishes helps reduce variance. Yes, that is true for his strategic understanding vs fish ranges. Does it maximize his winrate? No. Why? because these same spazzy fish, if they are fucking up, will pay you off when you have nut ranges. Being 150bb deep when that happens is an obvious +ev situation than donking around with 50bb and not being sure if he should shove his AKs preflop. Hitting nut flushes/straights/sets happens way more often than AKs vs AA super nits.

If he wants to portray a certain image in a live game, that is an entirely different strategy.

This guy has contradicting strategic reasoning, meaning his overall strategy is wrong and should be dissected instead of taken at face value.

I know of a few people with astronomical winrates in live games. And realistically the only way to get the highest winrate is to cover everyone at the table. And im talking 17 bigblinds/hr + over thousands of hours. If by saying strategy. What a person might be referring to is 'gimmick to trick people so that they can be a small winning player by some small edge' then ok. But if you want to make the most money possible. its not at all going to happen with any shortstack strategies. So I would highly discourage anyone from trying these silly buyin strategies. It will only cripple you long term and make it so you will never be that guy CRUSHING.

LP to the rescue as usual, advice much appreciated. While there may be some merit to buying in short to get a read on people for the first 30-60 minutes, you can accomplish the same thing by just playing a little more passively full stacked until you've seen some hands, whilst at the same time not sacrificing any huge wins in the event that you do spike big.

Personally in a live game I totally disagree. They are fish because their ABCs are bad. They will value bet thin randomly when they never get called by worse. Cooler themselves when there is no cooler. And just make predictable bad call downs most of the time. When u don't have specific reads on a fish. Do the play that will work on the widest range of fish in that spot. It's like anything else in poker. If u don't have enough info to do something specific. Then act according to the range of possibilities that are possible. They for the most part all react similarly in many spots. Your autopilot should always be enough to crush them even readless. Aquire info as u go. And crush them in the mean time.

lol I mean the last sentence is basically the entire argument. If you are a bad player you will lose less with a smaller stack, you might even be able to quickly learn a winning style of play because small stack poker is really easy to be decent at and most people are bad, so being decent makes you win. But I mean this is completely obvious and intuitive, way to write a book about something that can be coherently and fully explained in two paragraphs.

I don't see how someone's book that says buying in for a half stack is even worth looking at
That's practically cutting your bb/100 by a lot
Matter of a fact you should see who has the biggest stack and cover him

everything that fish wrote in the OP's article is honestly simplistic and retarded.

Doomer explained it well

First 3 orbits at 2/5, UTG looks to be fishy but is sitting on 700BB's, he clearly attempts to raise but fumbles the chips so bad it practically looks like a string bet so he just gives up and says "call". UTG+2 sitting on 300BB's raises to $25, 2 calls and UTG goes allin. UTG2 snap calls and they both turn over AKo. This is why we buy in deep