Ring Games: Playing the Small Stack
written by BeatTheFish.com
...Fishy says, "It's nice to be
called something other than small fry."
Most poker experts, authors, and
professional players will tell you how preferable it is to buy into
a no-limit cash game with the maximum possible buy-in. While there
are several benefits to having a large stack in a ring game such as
intimidation, comfort, and the ability to win more when you hit,
there are also numerous advantages for buying in for the minimum
allowed at the table. Of course, that all depends on if you can
handle being on short money psychologically. In this article, I'd
like to examine 3 key reasons for buying in for the minimum in
no-limit hold'em cash games:
1) Less risk.
The first, and obvious, advantage of buying in for the minimum is
the lower financial risk to your bankroll. The typical minimum
buy-in is 20 times the big blind at a no-limit ring game. That means
that you can buy into a $1/2 game for $40 or a $5/10 with $200. Most
poker experts will tell you to avoid playing in games over your
bankroll. That is sound advice for beginning players, but if you
feel you can take on bigger games why not give it a shot for the
minimum? Of course, you’ll need to feel comfortable enough losing it
and playing on a short buy-in for it to be worthwhile. If you only
have $200 to play with, buying in $40 a few times gives you more
leverage than possibly losing all your money on one
bad beat.
2) Easier decisions. When
you don’t have very many chips in front of you, decisions can become
much easier. Instead of putting in a second raise preflop, you can
just shove your whole stack in. Because larger stacks might not see
it as much of a risk, you will often get paid off more with your big
hands than you would if you had more chips. When you move all-in,
you don’t have to make any further decisions in the hand. If you get
called, you just watch the cards fall and hope for the best. If you
don’t get called, you’ve picked up more ammunition for future moves.
At the same time, your opponents may try to run over you. They often
(incorrectly) assume that you’ll play extremely tight as the short
stack and that you will be intimidated by bets of exactly your chip stack.
If you're going to buy-in for the minimum, you can't be afraid to
move all-in.
3) The ability to double up.
When considering how much to bring to the table, you should realize
that just because you start off small there is nothing preventing
you from continuing to double up, dominate the rest of the table,
and build a formidable stack that towers over your rivals’ pitiful
offerings. It’s a great feeling to buy-in with some small extra cash
and wind up becoming the chip leader at the table because of some
well-timed aggression and fortunate holdings. If you can quickly
double-up your initial buy-in, you’ll usually about even with the
average holdings at the table.
Hands that I’m willing to go all-in with preflop on a short stack
include pocket pairs of J-J or higher, A-K, and A-Q (sometimes).
After the flop, you usually won't have much left in front of you so
when you hit top pair with a strong kicker, you should be thinking
about getting all your money into the pot. If you run into a better
hand, that's poker... especially poker on a short stack. When the money goes in, there are
almost always
outs to make the winning hand. If you don’t connect, at least you didn’t
buy in for much! Remember, you don’t want to just call a lot of
raises with a small stack. That will deplete your chips and leave
you without enough to go to battle with and make any serious money
on future hands. As a short stack, you’re better off going all-in with a quality hand preflop when you
still have some money at the table.
Of course, this type of buy-in
may not be for you, but I’ll sit down for the minimum about 20-30% of
the time to challenge myself and make a big profit out of a small
investment.
Back to General Poker
Strategy
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