Guidelines for playing live $1-2 with short stack?

I'm a newbie take it with a grain of salt.
1）You're not risking 15 to win 3, you're risking 15 to win their stack when you hit.
2) Folding trash and playing in position is probably the most profitable play. Ax suited is some good stuff for drawing to the nuts. Connected cards like 9tjq are good especially if double suited.
3) Blinds are difficult to play unless you flop nuts,turn nuts, river nuts,and there are fishes who will pay you off.

Short stacking is extremely nuanced and requires its own skill set. That said, I’ve never seen a good short stacker live at any stake.

Understand the EV from short stacking comes almost entirely from our increased equity realization. That means our hands can easily get to the river/showdown majority of the time while we put deeper stacks in tough spots as they have to play a multi street game vs other deep stacks.

This also means we are jamming majority of hands deemed “good enough” and you need to be prepared for that.

We don’t generally want to be open limping in live PLO at these stakes as the rake is too high and we don’t have a big enough stack to set mine. Instead we wanna be playing tighter but open to full pot. We want to give every opportunity for someone to 3b us and reduce the SPR to as close to 1 on the flop as possible.

This also works in reverse. Our calling range is drastically reduced while our 3b range generally stays the same or increases as we can comfortably play for stacks majority of the time considering we only have 50bb.

High card power is the name of the game. Hands like shitty Kings go up in value while hands like A678ds go down. We care less about playability and more about raw equity. Very much like short stacking in holdem.

We want to flop hands like top pair + draw or better every time we play a hand and need to recalibrate our hands to do so.

This means we fold lower rundown hands but absolutely pile money in with hands like shitty KK and shitty QQ.

Push your raw equity at every opportunity and give up the marginal draws.

You can also never fold a set at this stack depth so keep that heuristic in mind. Nor can you ever fold hands like the bottom end of the straight. You just don’t have enough BB for it to be a big enough mistake.

There’s way more nuance than this in short stacking. A good short stacker is a menace to a table and forces everyone to be aware of him when they are in a hand. That said, again, I’ve never seen a good short stacker live in PLO.

Thanks. Most solvers sort preflop hands based on their EV. Is there a way to also sort by raw equity?

Besides AA, what hands have the best raw equity such that we can comfortably 3bet and GII? KK, QQ, what about ss rundowns AKJ9?

Not really but hands like weak KK will have more EV shortstacking just because we can realize more of the equity, easier.

So situations arise where we can open KK72ss, face a 3b, then profitably just jam the KK for 40bigs and be up against hands like AQJ9ds or something that can’t fold for 40bigs and have to call off.

Whereas had we had 100-200bb we may actually have to fold KK72 pre and we definitely fold it if we face a 3b.

Short stacking in live PLO is for nits. You won’t be well liked, you won’t get action. You will be contributing nothing while attempting to take the maximum with the least risk. My advice…go play NL and free up the seat for someone who is willing to give action. PLO is the funnest game in almost any room. Don’t be that guy.

You can't actually open limp in this game. You can open raise to 2.5x, 5x, or 7.5x. The game is designed for nits, you can just fold cheaply for hours if card dead. It lowers variance and is good for building a bankroll.

If the game is worth playing, people will give you plenty of action on 7.5x opens. If they don't, change tables or quit. Smaller sizings are pointless unless you love feeding the rake.

You are correct that blind defense should be practically nonexistent. If someone is frequently defending his $2 to a $13 raise, he's a fish.

What do you think my 4bet range should be? All AA and KK, and pretty much nothing else?

Also, if we open IP and villain 3bets OOP with a range that is 100% AA, what hands can we call? We'll have a roughly 1.5 SPR. Will hands like JT98 ss have enough equity? I'm assuming we should snap fold hands like JJT9 ss?

The most important question hasn't yet been asked. Is the game time raked? If yes, it's not terribly hard to beat the game short stacking. Then again it's probably not hard to beat the game anyway.

If you have reason to believe the aggressor is going to isolate you are incentivized to jam with mediocre equity to capture dead money and clean up dirty outs.

Rake is 10% up to $5, with $15 opening raise. Is it worth short stacking or should I buy in for $500?

Time rake I think actually reduces the EV of shortstacking but I haven’t looked into it too deeply.

Time rake means you can play way more hands and actually incorporate a limping range. That’s prolly a net negative for a shortstacker IMO

He wants to isolate and play a ton of low SPR spots not high SPR multi-way

Strange, but could be true for some rake structures. I am used to 5%, cap 10€, which means max rake will go from 200€ pots.

With $5 rake cap it's probably as friendly for short stackers as it gets.

I would recommend against "short stacking" in the traditional sense meaning we double up and leave. If you want to buy short and keep playing as you run up your stack and always reload short if you lose your stack this will make you a very dangerous player going forward as you'll actually get good at poker. And if you're not great at PLO yet and are looking to improve this is a reasonable way even if you have a decent BR

Short stacking/ratholing live is going to be a pretty horrific min wage job essentially unless you get 10/25+ games

I subscribed to PLO Mastermind Lite version ($49/ month) because I wanted to study the difference between 100bb & 40bb preflop. I was surprised by the results.

100 BB opening frequencies:

EP: 18%

MP: 23%

CO: 31%

BU: 49%

SB: 36%

40 BB opening frequencies:

EP: 15%

MP: 18%

CO: 23%

BU: 31%

SB: 29%

From the early positions, 40bb plays a bit tighter. But no crazy deviations. From late positions, 40bb just plays linearly a bit looser, rather than exponentially looser as in 100bb.

However, I was a bit surprised, because I was expecting KK to be a premium. But the solver is still folding KK !AA: 49% in EP; 30% in MP; and 6% in MP.

The solver plays essentially all KK from MP-SB, but folds bad KK from EP & MP. Is this because the solver is worried about a balanced 3b range, whereas, in live low stakes, I can always fold KK to a 3-bet that is almost always AA?

At 100 bb, against a CO open, BU calls 10% and 3b 9%. At 40 bb, against a CO open, BU calls 2% and 3b 9%.

However, I was also surprised by the results. At 100bb, BU folds KK!AA 18%; calls 59%, and 3b 23%. At 40 bb, BU folds KK!AA 35%; calls 17%, and 3b 48%.

While we 3b KK much more at 40bb, we also fold almost 2x as often. This means we can't blindly pile money in the pot with bad KK?

Curious what others think.

I was also surprised, at 40bb, against a CO open, BU 3b:

Broadway pair single suited: 17%

Ace high unpaired double suited: 66%

100bb, against a CO open, BU 3b:

Broadway pair single suited: 14%

Ace high unpaired double suited: 46%

---

At 40bb, we are slightly more likely to 3b our single-suited Broadway pairs, especially when we don't have an A. However, we're much more likely to 3b Ace high unpaired double suited hands?

I usually think of Ace high unpaired double suited as not having especially high raw equity, but fantastic playability. This contradicts the advice I heard earlier about prioritizing raw equity over playability?

Additionally, we are slightly less likely to raise connected double suited hands at 40bb (36% vs 44%). However, 36% is still pretty high for a class with such low raw equity.

DS hands have good raw equity esp the more connected they are, they sometimes depending on the hand/position/situation have good playability. With 40bb we don't care as much about playability and most esp with our 3b range, we only really care about raw equity

Tbh, I'm still a bit hazy about which hands tend to have the most raw equity. Is there a good way to study this?

I'm surprised that a hand as "strong" as KKQ2 ss folds on the BU to a CO open, while a hand as "weak" as J985 ds can 3bet. Both hands have 0 EV and are indifferent to folding or 3betting.

However, KK is an equity favorite (57% vs 43%). This suggests raw equity matters less than people are saying?

Not sure what sims you're running but I check 50bb on Mastermind and it calls all combos of KKQ2 on BTN vs CO open except it 3b ds and folds rainbow

Check it at 40 bb. It says "call" but it's -.01 EV, meaning it's indifferent to calling or folding.

The only KKQ2 that generates EV is double-suited and 3bets.

Same, checked 6m rake free 40bb and now it even calls rainbow rather than fold. Not sure what you're using but it says KKQ2ss is .69bb ev in that spot

I don't have rake free sims. But with low stakes rake on GG, it's indifferent.

Ok yea I guess rake is so bad on GG low stakes it eats up most of your profit. If you check other sites like Stars higher stakes where rake doesnt affect your EV much it plays that hand and is a pretty profitable call. This is another reason SSing below like 5/10 is pretty tough strategy to win much with unless you have a very low rake environment

I get that rake reduces the EV of all hands. But that doesn't really explain why the solver believes KKQ2 ss and J985 ds are equal in value, in a world where "raw equity is all that matters" and "we should pile money in with bad Kings." The solver still has a very strong preference for 3-betting double-suited hands, even at 40 bb.

It's apparently just a fold in a high rake environment. It folds it on Stars 50plo but calls it at 500plo. If you're playing smaller stakes that's just the guidelines you have to follow to play it profitably. Live games will play different and you're gonna often see action before it gets to CO typically in a 1/2 game. You'll have to develop a hybrid theory that includes ISO'ing limpers, 3b opens, and limping behind in LP with hands you want to play