I mentioned the thread in R.G.P (rec.gambling.poker a news group) called "Rose Colored Glasses" about playing short. I tried to find archive but could not. The title meant that the player playing short was seeing the game through rose colored glasses, meaning all the players had the same size stack as the player seeing the game through rose colored glasses. No player could beat him for more then he had, so no player at the table had a stack bigger then his. I think I read the thread at least twenty years ago, so what I do remember about the thread was long ago packed into my brain as things about poker, and not things about the thread and some of it may just come out as my thoughts on playing short.
As I write I am still anxious to see if someone steps up with a good strategy for playing on the minimum buy in in a no limit game. No one has stepped up yet.
Back in the late eighties there was a Pot limit hold'em game at the Sundance casino on Fremont street in Las Vegas. At the time almost every casino had a small poker room on Fremont Street. The game had 1/2 blind and a forty dollar buy-in. Four or five of us would sit around there with reasonable stacks of a few hundred. All night long players would come attack the game with the minimum buy in. Some of these guys would come back half a dozen times or more through out the night, taking that shot at the game. It was a turkey shoot, with few turkeys every surviving, and those that did would come back the next night and keep taking that forty dollar shot. For those of us that sat down with a reasonable amount of chips, it was a honey pot, for the rest of them it was poker death.
Over the years I have seen players sit down with a minimum buy-in at limit games and no limit games. Some get lucky with their pushes and cash out a few hundred ahead, giggle and leave the table. Most just loose their short buy, try again then loose again.
The basic thing about a player that sits down and buys in short, is that buy in tells you they are not a confident player. They are buying in short basically in order to pick up a premium hand then get there money in with it. They are doing this because the only part of the game they understand, and trust themselves to play correctly, is starting with a good hand. They are generally weak passive players that do not know how to bet a hand after the flop, and do not know how to laydown a loser, or are not able to figure out when they have a winner. They are weak players, that have just fallen into the short buy pattern from desperation. It is the only way they can get a little short term success. They usually fit the pattern of a degenerate gambler. This little rant is just based on my observation over the decades.
On a different level, conjecturing about buying in short as a valid winning strategy I fail to see how a strategy where one throws away most of their positive expectation tools can be a winning strategy. It is akin to making fine furniture when your only tool is a chop saw.
If you understand the chop saw metaphor you may be interested in:
So I looked at A fool proof strategy for wild games. To quote the article for the basic ideal:
Indeed, that’s what makes this strategy “foolproof.” Your goal is to
get your money in early with good hands so there are no tough
decisions. You aren’t relying on your hand-reading skills or your
creativity to give you an advantage; you’re relying on raw math.
The premise here is a wild 2-5 NLHE with lots of fast loose play and lots of big stacks. The author is advocating a 300 buy instead of the maximum buy of 500. The basic play is to make a raise pre-flop with a rank hand then get it all in when you hit a flop.
So many questions come to mind when I read this.
Why wouldn't 500 work better then 300?
Are math skills exclusive from other poker skills?
Getting rid of creativity gives you an edge?
Not considering tells gives you an edge?
I would say that in the fast game the author described that the effectiveness and usefulness of some game skills are somewhat muted. But they are by no means irrelevant.
This is somewhat like a Martingale system in the sense that it shares a belief that moderating the size of the bet somehow changes the odds of the bet. Only the short buy concept also adds that if you dummy down your game by lowering your buy you have a "Fool proof" way to win. Oh please!
What a short buy really does is diminish some standard deviation at the cost of expectation. If you are a losing player this is a good thing, if you are weak in wild games this also is a good thing, for some even a good place to take a shot. But it is not a winning thing. It is not an optimal way to play. Even if you have success doing this you are not going to have as much success over the long run as an expert player with a bankroll.
Indeed buying short is more about bankroll then about winning strategy. If your worried about fast wild games and losing to much bankroll in such a game, you would do better to simply stay away from them. Buying short can never be an optimal way to win. It is definitely not worth considering to much for serious players as a way to improve their game. Ray I would not consider teaching this in a poker school as a serious subject. Just something handy to know so you can spot it and devise a tactic to kill the turkey.
