In my opinion, the only time short stacking should ever be used is if your account balance is limiting your buy-in abilities and you have no intentions or possibilities of depositing or earning more money on the poker room. And often the reason people end up short stacked is because they've already lost the majority of their chips or won them from a freeroll or other offer. If you lost nearly all the chips from an initial deposit, then playing short stacked is really nothing more than grabbing for straws and praying you'll be able to hit a good streak and break even (and hopefully you'll have learned from your prior losses where you went wrong). It's hard to play good strategy when you're tilting from huge losses that caused that short stack in the first place. If you won them from a freeroll, just continue to freeroll for more chips and build a decent bankroll where you can stand your ground in the lowest limit games. I know...I know...who has time for patience when there's money to be won...
A lot of people win a couple bucks in the
freerolls and their quick to go blow it in ring games, when I think the reality is that you're probably better off taking those winnings to a sit and go or some other cheap/affordable tourney.
I think the OP is misrepresenting the true difficulty that short stacking is - and at the very root of it, using the short stack strategy as a full time tactic for your poker playing is simply a recipe for failure. I don't think it's so much of a strategy as it is a last ditch effort or hail mary that puts the luck that already exists in poker at far worse
odds against you.
Attempting to be profitable by playing short stacked is extremely difficult. The OP says you simply need to wait til you have great hands to bet with, but there's no guarantee when those hands will pop up and often you can end up folding your way all the way to broke just waiting for those miracle pocket cards. And let's say you do hit miracle pocket cards and the opposition starts putting the pressure on with higher bets. Unless the following flop, river, and turn can seal the deal for you - well, even a pair of aces can be
just a pair.
And then of course, there are a lot of hands that leave you on the fence when you're short stacked and the deciding factor of whether to stay in or fold is entirely based upon what the opposition does. And what will you do when they raise or open call - you're going to fold and likely have wasted a portion of your all pressure stack. Remember, premium hands preflop can quickly turn sour when the flop turns less than desirable pocket cards into monster hands.
It sucks bad enough losing pocket aces to a flush draw on the flop, -imagine how it feels when you're on your last few chips. Playing short stacked is a strategy for losing, bank those chips for a later time when you have more built up, or try an affordable sit and go where everyone starts on a balanced table.
And perhaps the worse part of your strategy is that you want people to double up and leave. And do what? Move to another table short stacked and with odds against you. If you building a bankroll at a table and things are going positive for you, why not stay at the table and keep things flowing in that direction. Moving to another table isn't going to change your chip balance any and you'll have no idea what to expect from the new players at another table.
Lastly, it is true that playing at a table with more players is going to allow a player to see more hands without paying the blinds and also potentially adding more money to the pot, but more players also means more hands likely to beat yours and more people willing to put the pressure on with raises and calls - even sometimes just to keep you honest. If you happen to be playing against someone who has a very high chip advantage in relationship to yours, it's very difficult to be successful because relatively speaking they have a very low price to pay to make sure you aren't pulling a
bluff and it can be hard to stay afloat if you're constantly getting raised and called. Your poker instincts would say that if you're playing smart, that you'll beat them when they attempt to call your "bluff"; however, often these players are doing so with half way decent hands themselves. Rarely will someone call your "bluff" with a 2-7os, so you can expect that if they raise or call you and put the pressure on, they have
something. So once again, this puts you in a position where you're either all-in (or considerably so) or folding and wasting valuable cards and chips. You might come out ahead a few times, but eventually you'll be sitting on the fence with a hand and decide to follow through with it, sure that they're just trying to keep you honest, and then they'll force you all in and your only option is to do the same - and then they'll have you hook line and sinker.
So, yeah, that's what I think of short stacking.
