There used to be a good short stacking strategy on a site called donkeydevastation, but the other day I went to look for it again and the site no longer exists. I think there were a couple of articles on playing both 10BB buyins as well as 20BB buyins.

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I started playing short stack strategy after a run at playing Full Tilt’s super turbos. In these sit and goes each player starts with 300 chips and the blinds are at 15/30 and rise every 3 minutes. There really is no room for postflop play because you start with only 10 big blinds, and unless you get some idiot limping into your big blind or you get two early big stacks playing each other, it’s all push/fold.

Playing the super turbos led me to become very tight preflop in the early stages:

• unwilling to call shoves in the early orbits without AA/KK/QQ/JJ/TT/AK
• unwilling open from early/mid position or to shove over limps without 99/AQ or better because players will limp JJ down to 22 or any ace and then call a shove
• playing position (opening with progressively weaker hands if the pot is unopened or the table gets shorter)

Once the game gets a little further along the blinds rise, the table gets shorter and I start to get some reads then I will start to get a lot more active. Or at least I try to. Sometimes the timing doesn’t seem to be there and I get a marginal shoving hand but someone else opens so I fold instead.

Then I took this playing style to short stacking $25NL, buying in for the minimum of $5 at 4 tables at a time. Largely I use the same preflop strategy that I use when full stack at $25NL; raising based on hand quality and position.

• Early: AQ/TT and up
• Mid: AJ/99 and up

And then from the hijack to the the cutoff to the button and small blind there is a fast increase in hands I will open raise with. By the time it gets to:

• Button or small blind: Any ace, any pair, any two big cards, any suited connectors or gapped suited connectors.

How wide I open my raising hand range in late position depends on the players behind me. If I see that they open call raises often I will wait for better quality hands. I don’t want to see a flop, I just want to steal the blinds.

The difference between my full stack and short stack preflop strategy is that I will not open limp mid pairs from early/mid position hoping for a cheap flop to catch a set because I cannot call a raise. And I will rarely limp behind with mid pairs or suited connectors either unless there are at least two or more limpers already in. Essentially the only limping I will do is completing from the small blind, and even that has to be good odds with a hand that has drawing value. I will not call raises with these hands because I do not have implied odds. In other words, the times that I hit my set will not repay all the times that I won’t hit my set. This is because my stack is too small to recover enough winnings when I do hit the set.

The other preflop strategy difference is that I rarely raise or 3bet to punish limpers or to isolate a weak player. This is because I do not have the stack to defend a 3bet after the flop or to defend a raise over limpers. The pot becomes too big so that my remaining stack is smaller than the pot on the flop, with two more cards yet to come. The only thing that I can do is overbet the pot and shove (unless I have AA/KK and want some action, then I’ll raise hoping for one caller).

The other key is to guess how your hand compares to the range that you put your opponents on. If I’ve got 99 and someone open limps, I expect them to have either a lower pair or overcards, and I’m willing to get it all in preflop. If, on the other hand I open raise AQ from early and a tight player reraises me, I’m at the bottom of the range of what I should have. If he knows hand strength and position he’s got JJ/AK or better and I should fold. But, if he’s loose and or overly aggressive then he might have any Ace or two big cards and I can push all in.

The problem for me comes with AQ/AJ/99/TT in late position with a raise from mid. I’d be willing to call behind or to raise with a full stack, but with a short stack and if there is no indication of a loose or aggressive opponent I’m not sure whether I’m ahead or behind at $25NL and I don’t have a stack to find out.

At $25NL some players will be liberal raising short stacks, though some will be hesitant because $25NL lacks aggression and some players never 3bet. Instead, they might call and then try to put you all-in on the flop.

Many players who buy in short and don’t know how to play; they buy in short just to limit their potential losses, and players will assume that because you bought in short, you are one of these players. This is where the biggest part of my winnings seem to come from.

~

All of this assumes some other basics, like no minraising preflop, c-betting most flops against single callers (I’d shove many on the flop because of my stack size, except if I have a hand I want to entice them to call), and leaving the table after getting more than 26 or so big blinds because the strategy no longer works if your stack gets to big. If you’re playing at a major site then there are plenty of other tables to move to. It’s a simplistic, tight, aggressive approach but it seems to work, at least at $25NL. It requires a lot of patience though because you play very few hands, and if the cards/situations are not coming sometimes my VP$IP sits below 10% at any one table. which means that other than from the big blind I’m playing less than 1 out of every 10 hands. Hence the advantage of playing multiple tables so that I don’t get bored or anxious and start playing more than I should.

The next step will be trying this at both higher and lower levels to see the results.

I do feel as though my postflop play is suffering because I am rarely playing those streets but my preflop play is tightening up and getting more sharply defined. I’ve heard claims that this is a good approach for beginners because of the simplicity, but I’ve made previous attempts at this and was unsuccessful because I lacked the situational reading ability, the discipline and patience, and the real understanding of what the short stack means in terms of lack of implied odds for myself and the opportunity to pressure other players because of the implied odds that I deny with the short stack.

This is in reference to low level play, where I get the feeling that some players believe that calling gives you more control than betting or raising. “I’m in control. I can call or fold.”, or something to that effect.

By calling preflop, you’re saying that you’re willing to pay the price to see a flop. You have a hand, you think it may be worth something, so you call. If someone raises behind you, you’ve already committed chips, so call the raise too.

There is some kind of weird logic behind it, as I can see how a beginner looks at AQ unopened from mid to late position and thinks that they need an Ace or a Queen to have a hand, so just call to see what they flop. This is the kind of play that bites me when I play low buyin SnGs instead of playing ones more expected with my bankroll, and I look down at A8 in the BB and think I might have fold equity if I shove. The schizophrenic nature of the weak players is such that they won’t raise when it’s their turn, but they’ll call someone else’s raise or shove. Calling, again, seems much less risky than raising because you can decline to accept. If I shove then the weak player turns from pansy to gambler, and in late stages of tournies this often means a hand that has me dominated.

Rather than AQ the same player can hold K5s, or 75o and think, hey, I can hit a big hand with this. I better see what the flop is.

An example of this recently at $25NL where I was in the BB, mid limper, hijack limper, flop comes 865 with a flush draw and I have J8 so I bet. Player in hijack calls. I bet the turn, call a river bet, he has 74o for a flopped straight. Who limps in a 74o? As it turns out, over the rest of my time at the table his VP$IP was 70%. That’s the kind of player who limps 74o.

This is a long ways from someone playing deep stack poker calling raises with 75s against other deep stacks. In deep stack poker you’re calling with 75s hoping for two pair, flush or straight draw or maybe both, against another big stack who has AA/KK or other big hand and you can get paid off big. But big is the key as you need big implied odds, not a limped pot with 74o against a mixture of 20-80bb stacks.

Anyways, back to this concept of calling being more attractive than raising. There are situations when this is so, like when a good player just check/calls a flop bet on a flop like K22, especially if they are in the BB and it’s limped pot. But poor players, and I put myself in this category at PLO yet, poor players are afraid to raise but willing to call and to call raises. PLO is a bit different as the strength of pocket cards are much less wide than they are in Holdem, but still I am aware that I limp/call too much. Is the embarrassment of raising and then folding a missed flop so great? Or are we afraid of not being able to control ourselves after raising; ie. we’re going down in flames over a missed board? Are we afraid that we set ourselves up to be bluffed off a marginal/missed hand over a bigger pot?

It definitely is easier to fold a limped or called pot than to fold one that we raised ourselves. But for me in PLO it’s largely a lack of confidence in reading the strength of my own hand, let alone the strength of my opponent’s hands. That, plus the fact that I’m playing PLO at $10 and lower levels so I don’t have much fold equity leads me to play pretty passively preflop. I suspect lack of confidence and lack of training is probably the reason why big hands get limp/called, and lack of training and lack of patience/desire to gamble/inability to fold is why poor hands also get limp/called.

As some point I guess I’ll get bored playing the cheap games. This probably won’t happen yet, but I do feel as if I’m not spending enough time playing better opponents where the thinking, hand ranges, plays at least make sense.

I didn’t really think that a physical ailment would hold me back from playing poker, but I’ve got one that has become a factor.

Two months ago the muscles around my right shoulder (I’m right handed, but can use the mouse with either hand) became sore. Most activities weren’t a problem, but reaching up or straight out to my side hurt, sending a quick flame of pain through muscles in the upper arm. Since neither of these are common or necessary movements in my usual day, I just avoided them.

It was like a muscle strain, only it didn’t get better. At first, it didn’t get much worse either. Exercising, stretching didn’t seem to have much affect so I just continued not using those motions that hurt. I also tried using the mouse only with my left, and adjusting my posture and computer sitting angle because I thought that the rigid holding positions while at the computer might either be a cause or a reason why it wasn’t improving.

Recently though, the left side started to get similar pain, but only when at an extreme version of reaching or stretching, so I finally tried to go to my doctor. To make the story more complicated, the office manager apparently “transferred me out” in 2004 so that I’m no longer a patient in spite of the fact just last year I had something come up where the doctor sent me for tests and called me. And the office manager is away, the doctor is not taking new patients, so I have to wait until the office manager is back to talk to her.

So, I went to another doctor. He tells me that I have a rotator cuff injury, puts me on Naproxen, directs me to a physiotherapist. I go to the physiotherapist, he tells me it’s not a rotator cuff injury, it’s a frozen shoulder. Gives me TENS for half an hour, some ultrasound, and then some very painful, veeery painful stretching of my shoulder.

~

What has this got to do with poker? Well, I think that the way that I “freeze” my upper body while working on the computer is not good for the shoulder. Especially when I’m multi tabling and actions are constantly required, the rest of my body is frozen in one position while all I move is the mouse. So I’m planning to cut down on the multi tabling, and force myself to move around once in a while, roll my shoulders, stretch, that kind of stuff.

There doesn’t seem to be a lot of clear documentation on frozen shoulder on the internet, partly because the cause seems to be unclear. Apparently in a lot of cases it just seems to freeze with pain, the pain subsides but continues to lose mobility, then it unthaws. Each stage apparently lasts a few months. It does, however, fall into the category of Repetitive Stress Injuries which include carpal tunnel.

Right now since the physiotherapist seems to think stretching is good, I’m doing stretching, but my plan is to try to get back with my regular doctor, get his opinion, keep going with this physiotherapist for now, use up the Naproxen as I don’t think it will cause damage and it was prescribed even though it doesn’t seem to be helping and the physiotherapist implies (but can’t actual say) that it’s not going to help.

I’m not enthralled with this physiotherapist either as he wouldn’t come right out and answer my questions about doing things on my own to help, plus he became very aggressive communication-wise after the aggressive stretching that he did. I don’t know whether this aggression came from being annoyed at my questions, from it being late (as I was the last patient), from feeling he needed to be aggressive with me since I had taken so long to get around to seeking treatment, or whether it came out of the physical aggression from the stretching?

Or am I hyper-sensitive to people showing aggression because of my poker play? That’s an interesting hypothesis.

btw, the “anon” in my domain and in my username does not refer to a poker problem like AlAnon or Gambler’s Anonymous. “Anon” simply refers to the fact that when I orginally made this blog public I wanted myself and my poker usernames to remain private.

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Poker is gambling, and yet, it’s not. You definitely put money at risk (even if it’s play money) in order to have a chance to win money. But the big difference between poker verses blackjack, bingo, or lottery tickets is that in all those other situations, ultimately the house wins.

Now in theory, if you can pick winning sports teams or horses you can also be a winner. I used to spend a lot of time in my office NFL football pool thinking that I had an edge on my co-workers because of my love of football combined with my statistical analysis and tracking, but that edge took so much time to maintain for a questionable amount of edge that I gave up.

With poker it’s much easier and much more obvious that you have an edge. If your bankroll continues to grow in spite of the rake, you have sufficient edge for the levels that you play.

So as a result many poker players don’t consider playing poker to be gambling. Some even consider it a form of investing, much like some people invest in real estate or stocks. I’ve taken some gambling questionnaires and found them to be largely non-applicable, answering “No” or “Never” to most of the questions.

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Still, the concept of gambling in general is something of interest to me. In my research on the internet I was reading an Australian study that referred to CPGI or the Canadian Problem Gambling Index, so I went searching on the internet to find out more about this index. It turns out that in Canada the Alberta Gaming Research Institute developed an index to measure the degree to which gambling is an issue. (Interestingly, The Alberta Gaming Research Institute is housed in the University of Alberta.The University of Alberta is also the worldwide leader in developing a computerized poker bot! Maybe we should all move to Alberta?)

The institute developed the CPGI as a framework to allow them to differentiate different levels of gambling problems, and then looked at other elements for corresponding increases or decreases across the CPGI scale. Since it’s publication in 2002 other research institutes have used this same index as a basis for categorizing persons with gambling problems.

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The key for determining the severity of a person’s gambling problem comes from the responses to 9  questions.

These are the choices:

1. Never
2. Sometimes
3. Most of the time
4. Almost always
5. Don’t know
6. No response

And these are the 9 questions, asked verbally:

1. Thinking about the past 12 months, have you bet more than you could really afford to lose?
2. (Thinking about the past 12 months)…have you needed to gamble with larger amounts of money to get the same feeling of excitement?
3. (Thinking about the past 12 months)…have you gone back another day to try to win back the money you lost?
4. (Thinking about the past 12 months)…have you borrowed money or sold anything to get money to gamble?
5. (Thinking about the past 12 months)…have you felt that you might have a problem with gambling?
6. (Thinking about the past 12 months)…have people criticized your betting or told you that you had a gambling problem, regardless of whether or not you thought it was true?
7. (Thinking about the past 12 months)…have you felt guilty about the way you gamble or what happens when you gamble?
8. (Thinking about the past 12 months)…has your gambling caused you any health problems, including stress or anxiety?
9. (Thinking about the past 12 months)…has your gambling caused any financial problems for you or your household?

Alberta Gaming Research Institute

For each response of “Sometimes” the person was given a score of 1, for each “Most of the time” a score of 2, and for each “Almost always” a 3. The total score then is between 0 and 27. They categorized gamblers as follows:

1. 0 = non-problem gambler
2. 1-2 = low risk gambler
3. 3-7 = moderate risk gambler
4. 8 and higher = problem gambler

Now for me I could possibly give myself one point for 2, 3 , 7 and 8. On the other hand, not really. Yes, I’ve taken stabs and higher levels to try to recover my attention level, but on the other hand I play far more lower levels that I’m over-rolled for than stabs upwards. And I go back every day, hoping to win if I lost the day before, but hoping to win if I won the day before as well; I don’t go back just because I lost the day before. And yes sometimes I feel some degree of guilt because of the time I spend playing poker or because a tough session has put me in a bit of a bad mood. And yes, I’m not there with a Zen attitude towards my game yet and I do get stress, anxiety when I have a big hand going on.

I don’t know that my answers make me even a moderate risk gambler though, because if I compare myself to a slot machine player or a sports bettor 2 and 3 should be zeros for me, and 8 applies only during the time that I’m actually playing or in a big hand, not during the other 95% of the time that I’m playing or during times I’m not playing at all.

And yet, I sometimes play an lot of poker. Not nearly anything compared to some of my friends, but compared to a working person with a family who has a passion for say tennis or golf, I’d be right there. But the questions in the index have little connection to time spent other than if the respondent feels guilty. The issues have to do with control and with relatively extreme financial and personal consequences which neither I nor any of my poker playing friends (at least that I’m aware of) have problems with.

Which is, of course, a good thing. Part of the reason that poker players don’t easily fall into problem gambling is that there are a wide range of skill levels to play at so a beginner doesn’t have to be competing against experts. This, combined with the fact that poker players harp on bankroll management to each other to help keep ourselves under control helps, but I like the fact that it is very possible to be a winning poker player which means that with patience, discipline and bankroll management, one never need be drawing from personal funds in order to enjoy playing the game.

My last post which reviewed Poker For Dummies made me think of Facebook poker.

One of my friends (who I was playing Scrabulous with, and with whom I’ve tried to initiate Wordscraper with but she hasn’t picked up the game yet) still plays poker on Facebook. She occasionally tries to get me to join by sending me invites but I’m really not interested since my first experiences with Facebook poker.

Facebook itself continues to be successful, so there’s no doubt that any application like a Holdem poker game would also continue to be successful no matter how poor the software might be. It’s more about socializing and sand lizards hitting on girls (your profile picture shows as an avatar at the table) than it is about poker for poker’s sake.

And because poker on Facebook is popular in spite of it’s faults, it spawns all kinds of related internet activity, such as

1. websites that claim to sell Facebook poker chips. One that I saw claimed that ebay has outlawed the sale of Facebook poker chips but this site will sell them to you by chip dumping; ie. you sit down at a table with them and they bet and you bet and then they fold on the river so you win the chips no matter what the hand. I dunno about Facebook, but that’s illegal on any legitimate poker site.
2. craigslist and kijiji listings also offering to sell Facebook poker chips
3. Full Tilt and Bodog both have references on their site specifically geared towards Facebook poker players who might be interested in “upgrading”
4. Sites discussing “cheats” for Facebook poker

Of these, 3. is simply a marketing target. These sites are acknowledging the popularity of poker on Facebook and are giving potential members something to identify with if they are in that category of potential members. 1. and 2. are an indication of how popular poker on Facebook is if people think that there are people willing to pay money for chips. If you buy something on ebay at least you have the seller’s references to give you some assurance, but I don’t know what kind of assurances you get if you try to buy chips via craigslist.

And 4. is both an indication of the popularity of poker on Facebook as well as some perceived value to winning and/or chip value. With any popular computer program people will be looking for mods or tips (for those who like to customize), cheats or tips (for those who like to jump ahead or progress faster like in adventure type games) or hacks (for those who like to cheat).

For some, the thrill of cheating, of beating the system in and of itself is an attraction, especially if you find the method yourself. That’s what hacking was originally all about back in the days of Kevin Mitnick and his friends. For others, there must be some sense of power and accomplishment when you have a method of cheating to win. But at the end of the day I don’t how much it’s worth to be winning play chips from people that you don’t know by cheating.

Maybe I just don’t think like a 15 year old any more.

EA games has decided to take the “For Dummies” instructional book series and build interactive “games” out of them. The first in this series takes on the “Poker For Dummies” book, with others to follow.

~

I don’t recall whether I read the “Poker For Dummies” book or not; I read a bunch of different books when I was starting out. Most were quite forgettable, so I can’t say how closely this follows the book. I can say that this game is pretty much for dummies though. Not that that is a bad thing, if you are in fact a poker dummy.

“Poker For Dummies” covers very very basics of poker, though it does include Omaha and 7 Card Stud as well as Hold’em. There are rules, hand values, tests, then a simulator to practise, with a “Poker Coach”.

The simulator is 4 handed, which is not a typical table for on-line play. I didn’t test it closely enough to see if it’s making adjustments for short table strategy or not. It’s obviously much simpler to build a simulator for limit than for no-limit, so all the games are limit versions only.

Some quibbles; preflop the coach will say “Just call. Let’s see where this goes.” I think that’s bad wording just because waaay too many beginners think that exact same thing and play too many hands. I don’t necessarily dislike the strategy, especially as it is limit poker, it’s just that the wording is something that beginners will too easily get addicted to using in their own games.

Another comment; I tried Omaha, and the cards are so big and the table so small it’s hard to tell who is sitting where. If you give the demo a try you’ll see what I mean.

Also, if you get in a reraising battle, it would be nice if the “coach” told you something like, “Fold, it’s obvious he thinks his hand is better than yours” or something, rather than giving you the same “fold’ message that it says when you totally miss the board to begin with. You’re folding for a different reason, not because you totally missed the board.

After working out with the “Poker coach”, then you can progress to playing poker against the simulator, with up to 6 at a table, with at starting bankroll and higher buyin levels that you can aspire to.

~

If you or someone you know is really just starting out, it’s worth downloading and using the 60 minute trial version (available as a free download on www.pogo.com) to learn the rules of poker and hand values. If you’re beyond that stage, it’s not much use.

* When I moved my blog the original posts went into the archive. I’m reviving some of the more popular ones. This one was first posted October 2nd, 2007

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I’m beginning to wonder whether the way to play low, low levels is to play tight/passive/aggressive. In other words, tight preflop hand selection, but only raise Sklansky’s top level hands, or late with no limpers, or from the blinds in a blind war. At the moment I seem to be having more success playing this way. I might even move more towards slightly-loose preflop with this, limping behind with any hand that has drawing potential.

The reason is that aggression doesn’t work against these players is because they don’t seem to recognize what it represents or what position aggression puts them in. The theory with playing with aggression is you raise preflop, chase out weak hands, c-bet at flops and the opposition can’t call unless they’ve caught a good draw or a big piece of the flop. In reality at these low levels a preflop raise doesn’t chase all the weak hands, and bets at the flop won’t fold the missed hands; they’ll keep calling with overcards or bottom pair. Plus, they interpret any attempt at pot control by checking the turn/river as weakness and they’ll bet at it. You’re left sitting with what was top pair on the flop, but now you don’t know whether they are idiots thinking you bluffed at the flop or they actually caught a second pair or filled up their gutshot straight. At the same time if you bet the turn, they’ll still call and you’ve bloated the pot and you still aren’t sure where they are. Worse yet, if a higher card, especially an Ace, comes on the turn or river, there’s a chance they hit what they were drawing for.

Yesterday on Full Tilt as an example I made money from one player when I bet with top pair at a flop. He called, I checked the turn, checked the river for pot control but he apparently took this as weakness and bet at the river with nothing, so I called and won. Later I raised with AQ, c-bet the low flop, checked the turn, and he throws out a pot bet at the river. I still had nothing so I folded, but I think this is his auto response to my not betting the turn and river. Likely the preflop call and flop call were almost as automatic.

In the SnG versions of this I’ve been caught in blind wars betting at flops like K94 thinking it’s unlikely they can call but they do, and go to show down having paired the 4. I don’t think it’s players having a read on me as being aggressive because at this point I’ve played very few hands, they just don’t know how to play, so preflop raises, c-bets, any kind of bet that not backed by a made hand is throwing chips away.

~

They say playing at low levels means playing straightforward, not using moves because the players won’t recognize what the moves represent. I didn’t think that it also meant don’t raise with good drawing hands, and don’t c-bet when you raised preflop. I thought that these were so basic that they would work no matter what level I was playing at. Apparently not.

I should probably keep in mind that most of these players have never heard of continuation bets or pot control, so there’s no reason to expect that they would respect them. The more I think about this, the more this makes sense. There is probably a significant percentage of players that I’m up against here who are virtually self-taught, not even having read a book or looked at an internet site so they see my preflop raise and think, “Hmm, he says he has something, but he might be bluffing and I have an Ace …”

Or when I bet at the flop having raised preflop, “He has something, or he might be bluffing, and I’ve got a pair with that 4 on the table … ”

And they see that I never min-raise/minbet, so they might interpret that as “He’s just a big gambler. Why else would he always bet that much instead of just raising?”

It’s starting to make sense; I’m playing by different rules, using a different language than they’re using.

~

And, of course, I wonder what effect this has on my overall development as a poker player. Instead of moving up and playing against better competition I’ve lowered myself (apparently more than I expected) and have to restrict my playing style in order to be successful. Why not move back up? Because I’m still under the larger project of playing at a new site to earn the first deposit bonus. Playing at my old level on the new site puts that bankroll at risk since at the moment I would have less than three full buyins.