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Short stacks
Apr. 12th, 2007 05:10 amAN interesting debate at the moment on 2+2 about petitioning Stars to raise the default buy-in and to raise the minimum buy-in for No Limit games.
To save you the strain of ploughing through the acres of unnecessary verbiage, one poster wants to petition Stars because, he claims, the short-stackers are ruining the game. (The reasons for this are somewhat tedious to elaborate, but the basic principle is that they force the game to tighten up and reduce the emphasis on post-flop play)
The defence of the short-stackers is that the "deep-stackers" are only moaning because they cannot adapt. In fact, this is just about the only defence they put forward.
However, the deep stackers have put forward a number of other "metagame" points, and to these points, reply is there none.
1) Short-stacking will serve to destroy the game, because it becomes an unpleasant aesthetic experience. As one deep-stacker put it, "Poker is meant to be fun. The short-stack strategy stops it being fun".
Since the short-stackers are mainly concerned with profit rather than fun, this argument is meaningless to them. "Enjoyment? The enjoyment is what you do with your won money."
2) Short-stacking strategy cannot be used in a live game.
Here the old "it's not like live poker" argument rears its head -- one with which I don't have a lot of sympathy. The Youngster has observed this phenomenon in PLO, where short-stackers sit down, double up, and then sit down at another table with a short stack. You can't do this in casinos, but you can do it online. However, here the short-stackers do have a kind of defence. They can simply say that "online is a different game. Live with it". The days of online trying to "replicate" the live casino experience are surely long past.
3) Short-stacking strategy makes the game less skilful.
Well, Felicia Lee once produced the refutation to this, relating to live deep-stack tournaments. The line was, if you are going to put in a raise pre-flop against players who you know are better than you, then make it a big one to reduce their implied odds after the flop. If they still want to play you with those reduced implied odds then, well, you are probably in there with the best of it. If they don't, then that's their tough shit. They will probably moan about the size of the raise, saying "damned internet players", but the fact is, if in poker you make a legal play that your opponent doesn't like, the chances are that it is better for you than it is for your opponent.
This whole debate reminds me of something David Spanier wrote over a decade ago when comparing casino games and home games, and I think that the online/B&M dichotomy can be compared with that.
Spanier noted that his style of play was such that he was no longer welcomed at some home games. He took it "too seriously"; he was "too tight". Spanier actually noted (the second time that this happened) that it was an unfair accusation. But, unfortunately, image is more important than reality.
So, Spanier went over almost solely to casino play. Even though the games were tougher, he found them more to his liking. Unlike many poker professionals, who play in casinos but spend most of their time hunting the "judges" type games from Rounders, Spanier preferred an atmosphere where he did not have to pretend to be a social player while stripping his opponents of their chips, even if this reduced his overall earn rate. He preferred a game where the social niceties were not so necessary, and he preferred a game where he could leave when he was up, without social condemnation.
Now, time-shift forward to today, and you can see that many of the online players are adopting policies that would be frowned upon in casinos or which would be physically impossible (doubling up then shifting to another table with a minimum buy-in; playing several tables very tightly; doing 10-hand hit'n'runs). For "live" players such as the Youngster, who still, subconsciously, feel that the online game should try to replicate the casino game, this is anathema. But to object to this is like objecting to the social norms in a casino game being different from those in a home game.
Some of the deep-stack players say "bring 'em on" to the short-stackers, solely on the grounds that there are a great deal more poor short-stack players than there are good ones, and that these short-stackers lose their minimum buy-ins often enough to out number the profits made by the "double up and leave" players.
Others suggest the introduction of "deep stack" games, with much higher minimum buy-ins. It would be interesting to see how this worked. I think that a number of the current deep-stackers would realize that the short-stackers cost them less than they think, if, in deed, they cost the deep-stackers anything at all.
A second suggestion (following the "online should try to replicate live" theory) is that if you leave one table with a stack of a certain size, you would be forced to keep that stack if you sat down at another table within a certain time limit.
It's always fascinated me how the default buy-in affects games. Even in limit, where one would think that it wouldn't matter a toss, there is something rather more satisfying about sitting at a UB game (default, 50 x Big Blind) than at a Stars game (default, something very low, 10 x Big Blind?). You just get the feeling that you aren't sitting down with a bunch of penurious 18-year olds looking to win enough to pay for the evening's drinking. After all, even at a $2-$4 game, if you move from $200 to $240, subconsciously this does not seem as significant as moving from $40 to $80.
And just look at the average stacks in the $2-$4 limit games on Stars. Whenever I do, I just say to myself "hell, there's fuck-all there to win".
++++++
I see Kurt Vonnegut has died. Perhaps he was an adolescent boy's auther -- I certainly enjoyed his stuff more when I was young than I did when I tried to reread them in my 40s. However, that doesn't detract from the strength of some of his works. God Bless You Mr Rosewater and Slaughterhouse Five were important in bringing SF "into the mainstream", and I think that KV can rightly be regarded as one of the more important American writers of the 20th century.
To save you the strain of ploughing through the acres of unnecessary verbiage, one poster wants to petition Stars because, he claims, the short-stackers are ruining the game. (The reasons for this are somewhat tedious to elaborate, but the basic principle is that they force the game to tighten up and reduce the emphasis on post-flop play)
The defence of the short-stackers is that the "deep-stackers" are only moaning because they cannot adapt. In fact, this is just about the only defence they put forward.
However, the deep stackers have put forward a number of other "metagame" points, and to these points, reply is there none.
1) Short-stacking will serve to destroy the game, because it becomes an unpleasant aesthetic experience. As one deep-stacker put it, "Poker is meant to be fun. The short-stack strategy stops it being fun".
Since the short-stackers are mainly concerned with profit rather than fun, this argument is meaningless to them. "Enjoyment? The enjoyment is what you do with your won money."
2) Short-stacking strategy cannot be used in a live game.
Here the old "it's not like live poker" argument rears its head -- one with which I don't have a lot of sympathy. The Youngster has observed this phenomenon in PLO, where short-stackers sit down, double up, and then sit down at another table with a short stack. You can't do this in casinos, but you can do it online. However, here the short-stackers do have a kind of defence. They can simply say that "online is a different game. Live with it". The days of online trying to "replicate" the live casino experience are surely long past.
3) Short-stacking strategy makes the game less skilful.
Well, Felicia Lee once produced the refutation to this, relating to live deep-stack tournaments. The line was, if you are going to put in a raise pre-flop against players who you know are better than you, then make it a big one to reduce their implied odds after the flop. If they still want to play you with those reduced implied odds then, well, you are probably in there with the best of it. If they don't, then that's their tough shit. They will probably moan about the size of the raise, saying "damned internet players", but the fact is, if in poker you make a legal play that your opponent doesn't like, the chances are that it is better for you than it is for your opponent.
This whole debate reminds me of something David Spanier wrote over a decade ago when comparing casino games and home games, and I think that the online/B&M dichotomy can be compared with that.
Spanier noted that his style of play was such that he was no longer welcomed at some home games. He took it "too seriously"; he was "too tight". Spanier actually noted (the second time that this happened) that it was an unfair accusation. But, unfortunately, image is more important than reality.
So, Spanier went over almost solely to casino play. Even though the games were tougher, he found them more to his liking. Unlike many poker professionals, who play in casinos but spend most of their time hunting the "judges" type games from Rounders, Spanier preferred an atmosphere where he did not have to pretend to be a social player while stripping his opponents of their chips, even if this reduced his overall earn rate. He preferred a game where the social niceties were not so necessary, and he preferred a game where he could leave when he was up, without social condemnation.
Now, time-shift forward to today, and you can see that many of the online players are adopting policies that would be frowned upon in casinos or which would be physically impossible (doubling up then shifting to another table with a minimum buy-in; playing several tables very tightly; doing 10-hand hit'n'runs). For "live" players such as the Youngster, who still, subconsciously, feel that the online game should try to replicate the casino game, this is anathema. But to object to this is like objecting to the social norms in a casino game being different from those in a home game.
Some of the deep-stack players say "bring 'em on" to the short-stackers, solely on the grounds that there are a great deal more poor short-stack players than there are good ones, and that these short-stackers lose their minimum buy-ins often enough to out number the profits made by the "double up and leave" players.
Others suggest the introduction of "deep stack" games, with much higher minimum buy-ins. It would be interesting to see how this worked. I think that a number of the current deep-stackers would realize that the short-stackers cost them less than they think, if, in deed, they cost the deep-stackers anything at all.
A second suggestion (following the "online should try to replicate live" theory) is that if you leave one table with a stack of a certain size, you would be forced to keep that stack if you sat down at another table within a certain time limit.
It's always fascinated me how the default buy-in affects games. Even in limit, where one would think that it wouldn't matter a toss, there is something rather more satisfying about sitting at a UB game (default, 50 x Big Blind) than at a Stars game (default, something very low, 10 x Big Blind?). You just get the feeling that you aren't sitting down with a bunch of penurious 18-year olds looking to win enough to pay for the evening's drinking. After all, even at a $2-$4 game, if you move from $200 to $240, subconsciously this does not seem as significant as moving from $40 to $80.
And just look at the average stacks in the $2-$4 limit games on Stars. Whenever I do, I just say to myself "hell, there's fuck-all there to win".
++++++
I see Kurt Vonnegut has died. Perhaps he was an adolescent boy's auther -- I certainly enjoyed his stuff more when I was young than I did when I tried to reread them in my 40s. However, that doesn't detract from the strength of some of his works. God Bless You Mr Rosewater and Slaughterhouse Five were important in bringing SF "into the mainstream", and I think that KV can rightly be regarded as one of the more important American writers of the 20th century.
