The general consensus is that it is irrelevant who the effective stack is, that you should play strictly based on the effective stack size ratio to the BB. I've been considering this and have come up with some situations where it seems to me that who the effective stack is may be relevant and I'd like to ask your thoughts on it;
- Scenario 1) Lets say you are down to about 10-12 BB's, let's say you have around 500-600 chips and the blinds are 25/50 and about to increase to 50/100 "within 1 minute" (this information is relevant since 25/50 - 50/100 is a different ratio than an increase of 50/100 - 75/150). Now once the blinds increase, you will have almost no fold equity when you shove (down to 5 BB's or less if you play passive and lose more). Obviously you would be in a much better position to scramble to steal 2-3 blinds so that when they increase, you may have 600-700 chips and thus have some fold equity at the higher blind level.
So in this situation it seems to me that you'd be correct to push wider and not take much time on your actions, so you can hopefully build up some fold equity.
Now lets say the situation was reversed and your opponent was short, about to find himself with almost no fold equity. In this situation it seems the reverse would be true, it would not be in your interest to act fast to see as many preflop shoves as possible in order to build up fold equity for the next blind level. It seems that you would be best off to take the normal amount of time and the gap concept would slightly decrease, you wouldn't want to shove as wide since he will be calling wider.However you may want to call wider since he is also shoving wider, so the dynamics of the gap concept may change some, affecting your play along with the speed that you may want to act before the blind level increase.
- Scenario 2) Some situations, there are many but a good example would be when your are playing a loose agressive calling staton and you've been trying to build a pot post flop all game vs preflop since your opponent will call and bluff/bet any flop, turn and river. Now you're down to around 15BB's and your plan is not working since you've been unable to catch any flop at all (very frustrating situation). It seems that at this point your time for waiting for flops is coming to an end, and you may want to reevaluate and employ a new strategy, like raising 1/3 of your stack preflop with a high showdown equity type hand and shoving any flop (or half pot if you hit).
On the other hand, if your opponent were the one down to15 BB's, you really dont need to re-evaluate since your strategy has been working.
So, in this situation, your short stack may force you to re-evaluate and possible alter your strategy. While on the other hand if your opponent were short, you may not need to re-evaluate.
- Scenario 3) It seems to me that when your opponent is short, maybe down to 10-12 BB's (assuming he is not shoving preflop liberally), you can often min bet him to death. It seems that when the average opponent gets short, he gives up limped pots more easily if he doesn't hit since he feels he doesn't have the chips to call with A high or drawing hands. Most opponents often seem less likely to bluff limped pots when short (I said most, definately not all, I will definately bluff limped pots when I'm short!).
On the other hand, when it is me who is short, I more often come across an opponent who begins to min bet every limped pot and call me more liberally since he has a sense that he can afford it.
For me, I play this the same regardless if I'm short or he is (with regards to min bets in limped pots). However, knowing that they are usually more apt to fold when they are the ones who are short, I see if I can min bet them to nothing if they will let me, before I start shoving preflop. If they let me, I do it, if they dont, I shove more liberally prelop.
In this situation I'm not really saying you act differently based on who the effective stack is, I'm saying you act differently based on how THEY react to who the effective stack is. However since I see this situation more often, I do make some assumptions based on who is short and I re-evaluate based on how they react to my strategy.
So overall I agree that mathematically it may not matter who the effective stack is, but from the point of view of the above mentioned point, it sometimes does matter who the effective stack is (imo).
I'm still new to HU, so I wrote this only to open the discussion and get your thoughts, not in any way to try to teach anyone anything they didn't know.
So please do respond if you have any ideas or comments on this. I appreciate your feedback!
Steve
Stevenrh1
On my way out, I just read some of this, but:
"scenario 1) Lets say you are down to about 10-12 BB's, let's say you have around 500-600 chips and the blinds are 25/50 and about to increase to 50/100 "within 1 minute" (this information is relevant since 25/50 - 50/100 is a different ratio than an increase of 50/100 - 75/150). Now once the blinds increase, you will have almost no fold equity when you shove (down to 5 BB's or less if you play passive and lose more). Obviously you would be in a much better position to scramble to steal 2-3 blinds so that when they increase, you may have 600-700 chips and thus have some fold equity at the higher blind level.
So in this situation it seems to me that you'd be correct to push wider and not take much time on your actions, so you can hopefully build up some fold equity."
In this scenario, if you feel you have good fold equity, you should be shoving hands regardless if the blinds will move up soon or not.
While I do agree with the general notion that the time before the blinds moves up is a factor, it usually isn't a major factor, particularly in turbo speed games.
Basically, if you see an edge, you should be taking it at 10-12bb, no matter if the blinds change in 8 minutes or 1 minute.
There are some differences at similar effective stacks, but it almost always has to do with how your opponent perceives the situation rather than the actual effective stacks.
For example, many opponents will play a lot more aggressively with 500 chips vs 2500 chips at the same blind level. Players play more aggressively in general when they are down a significant amount of chips compared to when they are up a significant amount of chips. It's not really correct, nor is it always true, but it is a fact. You have to adjust accordingly to how your opponent plays always, no matter the effective stacks.