Pick a Seat

[JimmyBrizzy]

Seat A and it's not even close. You want 2 s/s on your left? Seriously, they inhibit your stealing for all your late position raises. I could possibly cope with 1 nit s/s, but having 2 of them shoving is gonna be horrible. Yeah there are a lot of s/s that are nits, but there's also quite a few who know that your stealing with a wide range, and will shove accordingly.

I would rather have fullish stacks, so if they 3bet me I still have a choice to play position with them. With a s/s you don't have any post flop choices whatsoever.

But is the amount of money you make from stealing even close to the amount you can win from having position on players with 100bb stacks?

And even if you get 3-bet on a steal or get shoved on its about the easiest decision making you can have... Call or Fold. Don't have to think about a plan for the rest of the hand or analyze too many boards. And even if you make a mistake OOP against these guys it's costing you a lot less than when you make that same mistake with a 100bb guy sitting on your left.

 

[spunka]

B seat for me, SS will be easyer to play against, and I will have more info on the Big stacks.

 

[Gribbley]

I would take seat B. I prefer to sit right behind the money so I can pay more attention to what it is doing... Hopefully moving one seat to the left.

 

[FlowJoe]

A for me, SS and even shorter stack on my right. I'll play the full stacks appropriately. Personal preference!!

 

[zachvac]

Seat A and its not close.

FYP

 

[blankoblanco]

so you'd rather be playing pots out of position 100 BBs deep than having a simple call or fold decision when the shortstack shoves on you? because that's the alternative. plus shortstacks play less hands, so you'd probably have more hands where you're playing deep OOP than you'll have hands where you're getting shoved on. add to that the fact that you don't have good position on anyone with a full stack, and that sucks for a good player

i haven't seen a good response to this yet from any of the A supporters

 

[RichKo]

Here is Paul Wasicka's explanation of a short stacker (which is what I figured WV was talking about.)

"Basically, short stackers are players looking to flip a slightly weighted coin. Their whole game consists of getting all the money in preflop. Their basic strategy is to sit down with around one-fifth of the maximum buy in, wait till they have a decent hand and there's some money in the pot, and then shove in their stack."

First, to me that sounds like aggression, yeah I'm sure most of the time they are nits with their hand selection, but there is no playing against that, it's constant races on a coinflip. And from everything I've ever learned, you want aggressive players on your right. People mention you can steal their blinds easy if they're on the left, but, as that is good, it matters more in tourneys when the blinds are huge and ante's are involved. In a cash game thats all your gonna be taking is their small puny blinds because if they are playing its usually for their whole stack, so your not gonna be pushing them off anything. (A) to me is the right choice, cause you have position on the ss, and do you want to keep putting a quarter to a fifth of you stack on the line when you raise, then have the ss's go all in...really.

 

[Mase31683]

I'd rather just take a different table althogether, this one doesn't seem too great

 

[zachvac]

i haven't seen a good response to this yet from any of the A supporters

Sorry playing a session right now and all I have time for is dumb posts like my last one and this, but I'll respond to this in a few minutes when all my tables close.

 

[blankoblanco]

just seems as if some of you are acting like shortstacks magically get dealt better hands than regular players. they don't. so what, they'll shove on you sometimes. often you're going to be able to make very profitable calls against their range. you do have to adjust what you're opening a bit depending on how much they're shoving on you, but really, a typical shortstackers 3bet % is usually not going to be more than 7-8%, often it's more like 5%

i don't see how being out of position vs. the money can be better than having position on the money, as long as you're playing better than your opponents and adjusting well

 

[dsvw56]

i haven't seen a good response to this yet from any of the A supporters

1) The majority of hands we want to play will be from the button, during which we have position on two full stacks in the blinds which we can use our position to outplay. We can afford to take more flops in position in 3-bet pots here with some of our more speculative hands. Also, ahead of the two shorties on our right, we also have position on two other full stacks when we are in late position. We want full stacked players in the blinds when we have the button as that is who the majority of our hands are going to be played against, and where most of our money is going to come from.

2) Having two short stacks to our left forces us to tighten up our overall opening range, especially in spots where we are stealing or iso-ing limpers. You become basically handcuffed from the HJ, CO, and BU with two very short players left to act. It also kills many opportunities for 3-betting light.

TBH, neither seat is very good, but if I had to pick, it's A all the way.

 

[blankoblanco]

their range to get it in vs. a 3bet will tend to be very tight though, and you still have equity when it goes in, so i don't see it as a huge deal. you can still 3bet light plenty in my experience

you'll have position on the full stacks 1 hand per orbit. yes, it's the button which is a kind of important position, but i'd say the CO and HJ combined are more important. not to mention hands from every other position kind of matter too

i agree neither seat is good though

 

[zachvac]

ok first off let's go over what makes a good shortstack. If we are talking about idiot shortstacks that run 6/6, then obviously I want B all day long. Similarly if they are like 80/60 I'll pick the right as well because I'll just steal with monsters and let them pay me.

But I'm assuming they are good solid shortstacks.

Generally a good shortstack makes their money from the fact that other people raise more hands than they should 20 BBs deep and shove to steal the raise. The reason they are so effective is that if they have a good estimate of your range they can play 100% perfect against it. Obviously you can both adjust, but generally you will have absolutely no edge over the shortstack if he's solid. Now let's look at a 100 BB stack on your left. Generally we are playing a ton of our buttons. Now it's not so easy for them to play perfect against us. If they start 3-betting us light we can 4-bet light. If they flat a bunch they have to play a raised pot oop against us. We can force them to make a lot more mistakes. Similarly it's the same thing with people on the right. It's easy to play against a shortstack. How light do they raise? Does FE + equity when called justify a shove? It's an easy decision. The only time it sucks to have a shortstack to the right is when we're on the button and hijack or CO raises. We can't call a lot in position because effective stacks aren't deep enough. But the first situation comes up far more often because a good player should be stealing a ton more on the button than the hijack/CO anyway.

So that's my justification for picking A.

 

[blankoblanco]

if we're imagining the shortstackers are good, shouldn't we also be imagining that the big stacks are equally good? i'm not saying it's not a pain to have good SSers on your left because it does affect how you have to play. but i think it's much more of a pain in the ass (and the wallet) to have good full stacks on your left. playing pots deep OOP against good players = kill me

and yeah, i realize shortstackers can play unexploitably, that they do have a built in edge against you when they have position. but their edge is still pretty small. if you look up win rates for most of the shortstacks who really know what they're doing, they're usually very tiny. a good player with 100 BBs effective and position on you is probably going to have a much bigger edge imo

 

[Jagsti]

But is the amount of money you make from stealing even close to the amount you can win from having position on players with 100bb stacks?

Err, well probably yes. Don't forget if the blinds call, we often take the pot down with a CB. So yes it can make quite a difference having the 100bb there rather than the s/s because effectively we lose all our cb's having them in the blinds!

I'd rather just take a different table althogether, this one doesn't seem too great

QFT bro! WV is evil imo, I think he needs to table select better .

 

[zachvac]

if we're imagining the shortstackers are good, shouldn't we also be imagining that the big stacks are equally good? i'm not saying it's not a pain to have good SSers on your left because it does affect how you have to play. but i think it's much more of a pain in the ass (and the wallet) to have good full stacks on your left. playing pots deep OOP against good players = kill me

The thing is the learning curve for shortstackers is much much shorter. They figure out ranges to call shoves from the blinds when they steal in position and ranges to shove when people steal. That's it. Learning deepstack poker is a bit tougher. There are far more good solid shortstackers than really solid deepstack players that I'd fear on my left. Lots of 100 BBers are just multi-tabling super-nits, some are fish, some are working on getting better, but I can count on one hand the 100BBers I've run into at 200nl that I absolutely hate on my left. I can name far more pretty solid shortstackers. The other problem is the kind of leaks they have. A shortstacker's leak is going to be very small in terms of ev difference so even if you have an average shortstacker on your left they'll play pretty close to perfect against you. An average deepstack player's leaks will be magnified on later streets and you can take advantage of them there.

and yeah, i realize shortstackers can play unexploitably, that they do have a built in edge against you when they have position. but their edge is still pretty small. if you look up win rates for most of the shortstacks who really know what they're doing, they're usually very tiny. a good player with 100 BBs effective and position on you is probably going to have a much bigger edge imo

But they kill YOUR winrate. Remember depending on the limit, a 0 winrate is still a decent winrate without rake. Mediocre players in the blinds with 100 BBs are going to donate a ton of money to you, while shortstacks in the blinds are going to take away any edge you have over them whatsoever and even if you both play perfectly that brings you into negative with rake. Of course if we consider mediocre shortstacks they don't play perfectly but your edge over them is probably no more than the rake so you basically break even against them.

Wonder if there's a way to get a stat for our winrates with a shortstack on the left, shortstack on the right, etc.

 

[blankoblanco]

good points, good points. between the above and dsvw's point about the button it's a lot closer than i initially thought

i basically make it a point to avoid either types of tables, but yeah, i was thinking the same about how it would be interesting to have winrate stats on that. my guess is that no current software filters that way, though

 

[WVHillbilly]

Where are all these good SS you guys are running into? I've only played up through 100nl (and only 15K hands there) but from what I've seen SS generally fall into 1 of 2 categories; ultra-tight or loose-gamblers. So you either steal from them all day or call their shoves light when they're in the blinds. I see zero benefit in having position on a SS because their stack size negates our positional advantage.

FWIW After reading all the reasoning I still feel that Seat B is the most profitable, but it seems that CC is fairly split on it. Honestly I'm a little surprised but w/e.

 

[Tygran]

Where are all these good SS you guys are running into? I've only played up through 100nl (and only 15K hands there) but from what I've seen SS generally fall into 1 of 2 categories; ultra-tight or loose-gamblers. So you either steal from them all day or call their shoves light when they're in the blinds. I see zero benefit in having position on a SS because their stack size negates our positional advantage.

FWIW After reading all the reasoning I still feel that Seat B is the most profitable, but it seems that CC is fairly split on it. Honestly I'm a little surprised but w/e.

^^ was about to type this out after reading zach's post and others but WV beat me to it

 

[c9h13no3]

Yeah, shortstackers are either 4/4 nits who never play a hand who we steal from with any 2, or they're super spewy smack-tards and we call their shoves with QT because they're shoving any 2. You don't need position on them, because all you're doing is playing 1 street. Sure they'll screw up a spot or two where you want to 3-bet light or whatever, but having position on the money will more than make up for that.

 

[Jagsti]

Where are all these good SS you guys are running into? I've only played up through 100nl (and only 15K hands there) but from what I've seen SS generally fall into 1 of 2 categories; ultra-tight or loose-gamblers.

Seriously when I was grinding FR last year, there were quite a few s/s that I didn't want on my left both at 100/200nl.

As for s/s winrates, you'd be surprised. I had like 3, 6max shortstack that had super, high winrates over major samples sizes. Even most of the FR ones had ok winrates.

And WV, yeah I don't mind having one super nit s/s in the blinds, but the loose aggro ones are just as much a pain in the ass as the good ones, b/c even though there shoving range is wide, we still have to tighten a lot. IDK, Zach makes an eloquent argument in support of seat A, and its pretty much what I always thought about them (except he explains it way better). The thing is if I see a FR table with more than 2 s/s, I basically give them a miss. For 6mx I wont entertain a table with more than 1 on.

 

[BelgoSuisse]

I agree with zach's arguments 100%. A good shortstacker on your left will kill your win rate, so A >>> B.

That being said, good shortstackers play hit and run, so if the two 100bb deep players are nicely fishy, i can imagine sitting on seat B anyway. Just coinflip with the shortstacker and either luck-out or see him leave the table once he has doubled. Just don't let him resteal. Even if i get the money in against the SS as a real underdog, that does not cost a huge amount in EV, and it's a good price to get peace if the deep fishes are worth it. We only have a problem when the next players on the waiting list are all good shortstackers too...

 

[Tygran]

Seriously when I was grinding FR last year, there were quite a few s/s that I didn't want on my left both at 100/200nl.

I can respect that..

So maybe the answer to this question is, as with most things, "it depends"? (And I would say depends not only on the quality of the short stack but also the fishiness of the big stacks to the right?)

I've (obviously) not played $100 or $200... up through $50 these rare "good" short stackers exist, but they are the vast minority.. maybe they get more common a level or two up?

 

[BelgoSuisse]

I've (obviously) not played $100 or $200... up through $50 these rare "good" short stackers exist, but they are the vast minority.. maybe they get more common a level or two up?

Yes they are. Mostly because you can make a living shortstacking 100nl and it only requires half a brain.

As much as possible i play the deep tables on FT (but buy-in at 100bb) and the 50bb min tables on stars because shortstackers can't buy-in short there.

 

[Kwolff]

I would take B. The two other shorter stacks will be pressing my blinds more than bigger stacks. This allows me to be a bit more aggressive with calling their pre flop raises and betting out against them. Chances are they will have to have something to come over the top or if I have a decent draw hand its not going to kill me to chase it. I am not worried a bit about the smallest stack. The guy is either horrible and we will find out or good and will double and leave or get bad beat and leave.

Again this all depends on how the play at the table is. There is a ton of assumption going on in this thread.

For instance if the player to the right of B is super aggressive with 3 betting I would prefer A to be UTG when he is on the button me raising with a few callers having him re raise then me isolating against him or atleast trying to lol. Also I can nail him possibly on an attemp to steal my blinds. Again its all theory until we see how the table is being played.