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

Bad KK are not amazing at 40bb. Amazing compared to what they are at 100bb, sure.

Doublesooted hands have better equity against villain's getin portion and A-highs are blocking it.

Having played a good amount of live short stacked PLO at 1-2-5 (long before solvers were in the convo) and having very little solver background currently. I will speak to the non-mathematical aspects of the approach.

If you take this approach and push these edges and play the all in game, eventually what will occur live is that an unspoken agreement will be made by two larger stacks to consistently squeeze or call you and soft play afterwards. If they recognize this is your strategy (most good live regs will), they will just force you to realize this equity against 8 cards constantly and this can turn nasty.

Therefore if you are not hitting and running or constantly table changing live to avoid the double team, this is not working many places live, maybe in certain less popular casino rooms, but not somewhere that decent plo players frequent.

On the times where your equity is realized you will make a ton obviously, but as soon as you win the all in where you were called in 2 spots you either will be cashing out or immediately changing strategies because you wont be at 40bb’s.

So it's just everyone realizing equity equally and the best player pre-flop (at YOUR stack depth) wins.

Over a very large sample size, no question.

And lets say the front end of that sample size shows profitability which it very well can…

Eventually if that player continues this strategy, as another poster mentioned you may very well kill any future action because players may just fold to the opens and 3bs and let you take the $8-$18, yea it might be profitable if they constantly fold, but as someone said, thats a miserable way to squeak out a living.

I don't understand the issue. Does it matter if the profit comes pre-flop, taking it down with a cbet or winning a showdown? It can be argued that poker is a miserable way to squeak out a living anyway. I'm pretty sure someone said that, thus it is the truth.

I don’t disagree that its a winning strategy, but in a live setting amongst decent players that will recognize adjust and and try to multiway a short stacker, I don’t think sims or solvers can put a finger on how that diminishes some equity if they don’t fold to one another.

But also, solver is not set up to try to gain from spots where a short stacker is all-in and other players have money. That's just a bonus and they need to be cheating to take it away from you.

You are playing every hand 40bb deep while they are playing 40bb deep against you and 100bb deep against others. That edge they cannot steal from you by cheating. And if it's not clear, that edge comes from pre-flop.

I don’t disagree that the pure numbers come out in favor of the hero playing proper ss strategy.

Maybe I should state my outlook this way (I’m not a solver guy), but to approach what the % equity comes out to for any given hand at 40bb in live poker, is a function of # of trials, or sample size. As that sample size gets larger we see a distribution that should replicate preflop equities and favors the hero if he is ahead preflop, as we increase the number of opponents that % equity distribution may fall. I equate sample size with time for live poker, the time it would take to realize that in live poker is not worth it against rake and other factors, especially when you can make more, faster, with proper strategy playing deeper if you were to approach that same “ideal” win distribution.

Yeah this is great advice, and for a number of reasons. The conditions that make short-stacking good make deep-stacking even better; getting to know how to play at a wide range of stack-pot-ratios will improve your poker faster; leaving when you run up a stack doesn't feel great, either for you or other players.

It will also teach discipline and give you the opportunity to demonstrate reciprocal edge over your opponents. If I run my short stack into a big one and then lose it all in a horrendous runner runner, and then calmly rebuy again for the minimum and revert back to your previous game style, you learn more about tilt control and show your opponents that the variance doesn't affect you as much as it does them. Both the fish and strong players tend to buy in relatively short earlier in the game, and by this point, would be rebuying for deeper stacks to reflect the depth of the game, and to recoup their losses faster.

For sure, but deepstacking is less miserable than shortstacking as you can open your game up significantly and play more hands profitably. And is (or should be) more profitable than shortstacking, enabling us to achieve our goals faster.

How many % more, assuming there are short stacks at the table? Not many. Take into account that perchance someone does not have the skill to play deeper stack profitably but can very easily win by making it a pre-flop game.

I sometimes buy short sometimes buy in deeper depending on seat and table dynamics. I have not experienced much collusion as the deep stacks have incentive to knock each other out even in a dry side pot.

My motivation for short stacking is 100% bankroll management. I don't plan to hit & run unless I get super deep with a good player, in which case I'll probably switch casinos.

If the big stacks collude and softplay post-flop, that essentially puts us all on an equal footing. It doesn't put me at a disadvantage.

Finally, I get that we can play slightly more KK at 40bb. I was just surprised that 40bb & 100bb have much more in common than apart. I don't see major deviations with any hand classes, besides just playing a bit tighter when opening, and cold calling much less.

Even at 1 SPR, bad Kings without board interaction will have trouble GII on the flop? (I'm sort of asking, because I don't have access to 40bb post flop solutions). Can we pot bare Kings on non A high/ non flush/ non straight flops at 1 SPR?

It negates your advantage, which has the same effect.

Thats how I feel, I have played many hands live and I know numbers wont explain it, but being double teamed works against your profit, maybe not your equity.

Those 2 are tied so closely together your equity as a SSer basically is your profit once you're all in

I don't think players are actively colluding in an unspoken way against SSers, they just aren't betting into dry side pots without a hand pretty often, if there's money in a side pot best believe someone will start betting their hand to protect their equity. Even when there's no side pot you are still gonna see people betting when they have good equity or a good made hand that needs protection

Exactly - they still have incentive to try to bet each other out of the pot. Sometimes your pair+good draw doesn't improve but your pair beats the all-in guy while folding out the better pair on the flop, And other scenarios too. If they decline to make these bets, they cost you equity, but they cost themselves equity too.

This

I don’t use the word collusion, its similar to a tourney where checking it down helps knock a player out, getting the short stacker out allows them to play the table more like they want.

In tournaments it's done bc the pay jump to eliminate the player adds value for both players so combining their equity to remove them and increase both of their pay makes sense

In a cash game it makes no sense and I would never neglect my own equity to tag team a SSer in a cash game who is very likely to just pull another min buy out of his pocket and reload. Esp in live PLO I rarely if ever see someone sit with a min buy, bust it and leave. Usually they have 4-10 min buys and I played with a guy who I watched rebuy min 25-30 times and basically get it all in every hand

The tourney concept of checking it down really doesn't apply in cash games

I beg to differ, I have played too many live cash games where people would love nothing more than to stack a ss’er and if he is rebuying for the min, they will just keep the same game going, and in many cases not having to risk their full stack and coin flipping and chopping up between. If that ss’er played deeper and applied the same concept many of those players make way more folds because the money is now significant if lost.

I think whats being overestimated is the competency of the average player that can afford to buy in deep whether bankrolled properly or not. I have played with complete maniacs who aren’t thinking about potential equity in a multiway sidepot etc. (when I say maniacs I moreso mean play any 4 cards but play loose passive, wanting to see flops turns).

Well I can't say this isn't your experience but it certainly hasn't been mine and I've played a lot of live PLO over the years

When I first started playing I was grinding 100bb 1/2 online but my live game was 5/10 and some hands the straddle was on so I was buying in $300 but not leaving based on my stack but rather would play 7-10 hours. If I got stacked I would reload $300 if I had a $3k stack after 4 hours I would keep playing til I hit 7-10 hours played. I never really experienced people doing this vs me. Also all the other "pros" in the game were buying deeper. Only fish were buying in short other than me and no one "checked it down" to try to bust them

Most of the games I play now I run into a fair amount of people min buying almost always with multiple reloads and probably 10% or less are fairly competent players who are planning to leave if they get up 3-5x. Most are just fish who will usually leave if they get up 5-10x and often go to dinner and come back later with a min buy again but also will go thru 10-15 buy ins in a night way more than they will run it up

The paranoia you feel that you are being "tag teamed" doesn't translate to an actual disadvantage in the game.

If the players both decide to soft play, they will be hurting themselves. And moreso, they will just create a fair playing field where everyone realizes their equity to the river.

In the worst case scenario, the short stacker has no advantage or disadvantage against colluding opponents. In the best case scenario, they have a notable advantage.

I once saw a guy go through 6.2k, 100 at a time.

I just played a hand in my app game that reminded me of this situation so I'll post it as an example. It's slightly different in that the SSer is not good and not playing GTO so he has a decentish hand considering he's 25bb deep and the other bigger stack has a good QQ which is essentially the same as KKxx except for his Ace if I have AAxx which I do

Game is 6h but I'll only post relevant info since I have to hand type it

$2/4 plo

SB: $100...............Kd Jc 9d 8d
BB: $320...............Ah Qs Qd Js
Hero MP: $400........As Ad 6s 5h

UTG limp, I iso to $18, fold to SB 3b to $60, BB overcall $60, I 4b to $244, both call

9s 7h 2s flop

BB donk jams his last $76 I call

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Now let's look at equities and the situation for both players and let's also look at how they change if SB actually was DS rather than SS triple

We'll start with HU for the sidepot, QQ is in awful shape in this hand overall especially since one of his side cards is an A which is slightly different from KKQ2ss but similar since the 2 is pretty bad like the A here

As Ad 6s 5h = 71.58%
Ah Qs Qd Js = 28.42%

So hu for the biggest pot which is the side pot QQ is in about as bad of shape as you can be in pf in PLO when you get it in with an underpair and one of your side cards is basically a dead card too

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Now lets look at all 3 of their equities for the main pot which means we're focusing in on the SB hand and if he's able to profitably jam this hand as a SSer

As Ad 6s 5h = 47.53%
Kd Jc 9d 8d = 30.60%
Ah Qs Qd Js = 21.72%

So as you can see in a 3 way all in for the main pot he's losing about 3% on his stack off here

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But here's the interesting part if we make his hand DS, which isn't even a great DS hand....look how much the equity changes all the sudden. He's now found himself in a profitable spot and QQ equity shrinks up even more in this situation as well as it peeling 5% off my equity and giving it to him

As Ad 6s 5h = 42.17%
Kd Jc 9d 8c = 38.17%
Ah Qs Qd Js = 19.56%

And now one more situation to consider is what if BB can actually fold this spot after putting the $60 in to my 4b. All the sudden the SB with his DS hand has 44.8% equity vs me HU where we each put $100 in but BB has put a 30% overlay into the pot for him so now he finds himself in an even more profitable situation

This hand should help explain somewhat why the solver really likes DS hands and doesn't heavily value KKxx hand weighted over them. KKxx does very well when it's up against underpairs without an A and does awful when up against AAxx and isn't a massive favorite even against Axxx.....while a not great DS hand is basically a slight dog coin flip vs AAxxss. So we have to think about not just raw equity but situation we may run up against and how different hands perform in these situations