Monday July 18, 2005

short buy ins

I recently picked up Russell Fox's and Scott Harker's Matering No-Limit Hold'em. I know Russel and Scott from BARGE and thought it might be an amusing read. Its hard for me to go to Vegas and not make it to one of the gambling book stores in town and spend at least some money. On page 8 I ran across this statement:

In all cases, we recomment you buy-in for the maximum possible amount -- there is no reason to put yourself at a disadvantage with your opponents by buying-in for a smaller amount.

I see variations on this statement made all the time. Typically there are no reasons given (like in this book) or the reasons are example of where it would be better to be deep. I think the statement is fundamentally broken.

First off I'm fairly certain that Russel and Scott are only talking about capped games (the context of the paragraph implies that). "In all cases" makes me wonder though. Even if we assume capped buy ins the statement is still to glib for my tastes. Its not clear that you are giving up an advantage not to take the max buy in. Maybe there are several target stacks that will push on the small stacks but play sanely against the larger stacks. This is not so uncommon in these days of television tournaments. In that case it can be more profitable to play a short stack. Maybe you are taking a short at a larger game and think that playing a short stack is a reasonable tradeoff. Maybe there are meta game consideraitons. For example I've played with one well known television "pro" who played like a smuck in a smaller game until he was covered. It would be silly to cover him.

Scott and Russ talk about Poker being a game of decisions. Behind those decisions needs to be solid logic. Learning to not just blindly buy in for the max or to cover the table is an example of where applying logic and experience can lead to becoming a more profitable poker player. ( Jul 18 2005, 02:16:03 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]