Do you avoid shortstackers in FR cash games at PS?

Do you avoid shortstackers in FR cash games at PS?

Also, what do you classify as a shortstacker?

Do shortstackers exist at PS in microstakes cash games nowadays?

Obviously I read the CotW about table selection before starting to dabble in cash games, and it was written in 2009 when PS were still allowing buy-ins of 20BB. Since then it has been increased by PS to 40BB at microstakes (which is all I'm interested in). The CotW about exploiting shortstackers says:But going back to the one on table selection, we are told to re-evaluate whether we want to leave a table after 20 mins, and a few people in those threads have said that they leave as soon as there are three or more shortstackers at the table. One person said that they considered anyone with a stack of less than 50BB to be a SS. So what do you think of as a SS when selecting tables, or re-evaluating whether to leave a table?

As a novice player I don't want to sit at the deepstack tables, which are going to be full of sharks, and I want to be trying to find players that are even worse players than me. If I followed the CotW guidelines I would probably never find a table to sit at in the first place, and secondly I would be leaving within about 2 rounds, once the table has 3 shortstackers

So what do you do?

for starters, there are huge differences between short-stackers and fish with short stacks. if there's a guy playing a rock-solid, super tough to exploit strategy @ 40 BBs, i hate him and want him to die (if there are a few of these and not many other soft spots at the table, i will most likely leave). if there's one or several guys playing 60/2 and they all have like 20-50 BBs, i don't mind sticking around to take the rest of their stacks, as that's generally not a very difficult feat

the games i play in are full of SS. 40-50bb's is about the average stack in my game.
your edge might be lower against a SS but if you learn optimal strategy you can play at any table.
different stack sizes require different strategy.

There are PLENTY of fish who buy for 100BB in the micros

I don't really pay much attention to it. I find that most of the time there are less than two SSers at any table. If there are more I will happily play them because they are usually bad

Yes, but you are talking as if you are already at a table, or know what all player stats are beforehand. How do you decide which table(s) to sit at in the first place?

OK, so you don't avoid shortstackers.

So what do you class as SS? When I look at 2NL tables I generally see five people with $1 or less and five people with $2 or more, so if 50BB=SS that's five SS.

i try to sit at all of the ones running lol. first off, you should shoot for as few SSs as possible, and if the stakes are meaningful enough, you should avoid regs that give you trouble too

OK, thanks

I just worked out why so many tables look shortstacked. When you go down the PS lobby looking at the players at the 2NL tables, it shows them as having either $1 or $2. However, if you actually open the table you find that somebody at $1.97 is showing as $1 in the lobby. So it's a ball-ache having to open each table, but I guess that's what I'll need to do

yeah. how many tables are you playing?

For me a SS is anyone withe less than 50BB. I play 6max; most people are buying in for full and there are normally 1 or 2 SS at the table. I don't even bother looking at stacks before joining a table tbh, I just go for ones with high average pot and as high player per flop % as possible.

Well I'm not really bankrolled for cash games at the moment, so no more than 3 tables.

OK, so you're ignoring them in your table selection too.

There was a suggestion (by Mike Caro, IIRC) that high pots are not necessarily the bees knees, because lower pots suggests lots of loose passive players that could easily be dominated by a strong player?

yeah w/ 3 tables you should definitely aim for the juiciest possible ones, so whatever ones have the most players with 100+ BBs

Maybe, but really low pots mean nothing is happening and normally happens on a table full of nits. I go for a balance and try to choose tables with both high players per flop and high average pot.

I think he was trying to say that high players/flop but lower pot sizes means a lot of limpers and loose passives that are not building the pot.

I have it sorted by players/flop, only showing tables with more than 20% players/flop, only showing tables with a minimum of 7 players (because lower numbers of players can skew stats), and only showing tables where the average pot is more than 25BB.

I always thought there should be a distinction between the shortstackers(ShS) and the small stackers(SmS). That way people can understand what you mean when you're talking about a fish with a small stack as opposed to a guy with 40bbs playin a shortstack strat.

You really dont have to worry about shortstack strat guys until you get above 10nl at least. I have seen a couple at 10nl but its so rare.

At 2nl nobody is playing a proper shortstack strategy which means the difficulty and reduced edge of playing them is not a factor. Knowing this the only other factor is the reduced amount of money we can win from a bad player, we want them all to have a decent amount of money to win from ESPECIALLY the player to our right, who even if he was as good as us we should be winning money from.

Basically, you want a full stack player to your right when you sit down every time. You want 1 or 2 SS's at most on your table but at 2nl you shouldn't even settle for that really.

You then play for 2 or 3 rounds and it should become apparent very quickly whether you want to stay or find another table.

- If there's a big aggressive fish anywhere you stay.
- If there's a fish that calls a lot pre-flop and is super exploitable post anywhere then stay.
- If there are a couple of bad players around that you have a clear plan to exploit then stay.
- If the player to your right is a big fish then never leave, if he's a little bit exploitable then stay unless the rest of the table becomes truly terrible.

If none of these are true then leave, if there's a not overly fishy player but the rest of the table isn't terrible then leave. You should also leave if the player to your right becomes short stacked and the rest of the table is average, he's the guy you have most edge over and will be most profitable. The beaty of 2nl is that you can always find a table better than the one you're currently on. Don't stop moving tables (unless you play tons of tables then it's too difficult, but I know you don't.)