Short-stack strategy in live cash games.

I think in general the shorter the stack the nittier you should play.

The deeper you are, you should loosen up your range, more 3bets, more bluffs, more barrels.

Of course alot of this stuff is very pool/villain dependent.

In a super fishy pool, you should bluff less. Iso wider in position. Purpose is to get headsup in pots with fishes.
Against wide opens, we should 3bet a wider range. Against tight opens we should 3bet a tighter range. We can also 3bet to iso weaker players.

Buy in full or don't play at all.

You could be the greatest crusher in the history of poker and you won't ever beat a 1/2 game with an 80BB stack because of the rake. You need to understand that you're losing money just sitting there.

If you insist on playing this way, you'll be getting it in pre-flop pretty often. If there's a raise to $12 or $15, followed by 2 or 3 calls, so there is $40 or $60 in the pot...jam it in with anything that will have decent equity when called.

First of all, to get our terms right, we're talking about effective stacks, not necessarily what you have.

Next, you're not really describing short stack play. Obviously it can be subjective, but 100BB is the standard. You make adjustments to that for deep stack play, not vice versa. So if you're asking about normally playing 250BB and effective stacks are 250 and that's what you're used to playing, then yeah you might make adjustments for 100. If that's your goal, then just read any poker book, and the default is going to be about 100, so just play that strategy. If you're the only one who's "short", then yeah now you can start looking at a strategy for all hands, but...

Short stack play is around 40-50. Again some gray areas. So if you're buying in 100 and several people around you are 40, then you're 40 effective against them. Problem is, you don't know who "them" is until they've revealed they're going to play the hand. Technically only works if you're in the BB.

Also, you don't need to listen to advice like "you can't win with 80BB" because as someone already mentioned a lot of this is pool/villain dependent. There are players who are super easy to play against (and bad) if you have 50BB, but extremely difficult to play against if you are both very deep. It's a matter of style of play. You're not getting bluffed off AK on an Axx flop at 50 deep with a preflop raise. And the kneejerk response to that would be "then get better at playing deep stack", but that is missing the point, which is that you can absolutely win money short stacking under the right conditions. It can be quite stunning how much of an equity disadvantage other (effective) short stackers are willing to put themselves in.

And then the obvious problem with short stack strategies - you're not short stacked for very long. Unless maybe you're at a whole table of short stackers, which isn't too common. So short stack strategy is definitely worth knowing, if for nothing else your general poker knowledge. The problem is it just doesn't happen that often ITRW.

GG has a decade + record of beating his game starting with 80 BB, FWIW.

Another way a standard game can become effectively short stacked is if people play abnormal raise sizes with the normal range of hands. If the "standard" raise preflop from several people is $20-30, and people adjust and call those raises as if they were $6-10 raises, then (as in so many 1/2 games) the blinds basically become irrelevant, and the game becomes short stacked for certain hands, at least. So even if everyone at the table has standard stacks, some hands are going to be played effectively short stacked.

I recall one woman who raised to $30 every time she had any pocket pair. She just thought she had an immediate gigantic advantage over everyone else in that spot. So to answer one of your questions, yeah set mining and playing suited connectors is awful here. And normally everyone else is adjusting terribly (i.e. not adjusting, for example set mining and playing suited connectors). Heads up you obviously want big pairs. Against multiple people you play those plus just start "pair mining" with big cards.

Here's an interesting thing to note about playing her heads up. If her range is AA-22, and you have AA-TT, you have 70% equity. If you add AK, then your equity plummets to 60%. If you add to that AQ, KQ, and AJ, then your equity plummets to 50%. And that's if you get to see all 5 cards. That's why you need other people in the hand to play those hands.

Bart Hanson used to peddle something called the "10x/20x/30x" rule. It refers to the implied odds you need to play pocket pairs, suited connectors, and suited 1-gappers.

I think Bart Hanson a great player, and really good at hand analysis. Like really really good. Some of his coaching content, though, feels like a book report written the night before it was due. This is one example.

It's not a useless heuristic though. We can refine it with realistic numbers. A better rule likely would be closer to 20x/40x/80x the raise size. So if you're only 80BB's deep, you really can't play any speculative hands profitably over the long term.

I think Jonathan Little said 15 for pocket pairs, but yeah. One advantage pocket pairs have is that they can win without improving, so maybe Hanson included that in his conclusion. The others seem optimistic to me as well.

I’m pretty good at playing the short stack, but it’s from playing tournaments. In cash games, it’s almost always weak players playing short.

I think you look for good situations:
Like an open to 15, two call and you shove any ace for 150 - they probably fold

1. Probably, nobody plays as tight as they should
2. Yes, stay away from speculative hands
3. I don’t know what you mean
4. You want to surprise them with jams - the all-in is your best weapon with a short stack, but you can’t be reckless
5. again, don’t know what you mean

The best way to play short is to play so tight they forget about you and then when they splash the spot with their wide ranges, you jam it in. Well, it was worth 15, but not 125 they say.

Main point
Play tight and focus on big cards
You can’t get involved with draws
Looking for made hands
Take chances with an ace which can win unimproved.

Seriously, you’ve got to play tight as you don’t have to worry about escalating blinds. If you play a short stack like a deep stack it will disappear. Players think they are risking less, but they are risking more if they don’t know how to play short. It’s just weird to me short stacks buying in 4 or 5 times

- Should I play tighter preflop?

Yes. 3!/raise or fold because there's little post flop play.

-Do hands like suited connectors and small pairs lose value?

Yes and unsuited broadways increase in value. In general, the deeper you are the more relevant the concept of "playability" becomes.

- Should I simplify postflop and avoid marginal spots?

If you're short, there isn't a marginal spot - jam or fold.

- How aggressive should I be in jam-or-fold or commit spots?

If you're short, basically every flop is commit or fold. Either go with your hand or fold. You don't want to be putting in 20%+ of your stack just to peel a card. The only reason to call is if you have value and you think calling will get V to put more in the pot than jamming now.

- Against loose live players, is a more value-heavy approach best? Where I play there are many like that.

In general you can press hard with value in live poker. If they are calling light, you can jam very wide. Ideally you want to jam when there is potential for a lot of dead money. Like 6 people limp around and you have Ax that's 6bb which gives you the right odds against most of the ranges that will call you.