The Shark Tank

There is one thing that always happens to me when I’m playing good.  I get abuse in the chat box telling me what an idiot I am.  I find this to be a surefire sign that I’m playing right.  It is because when I’m on my game, I’m tormenting people by pushing them around and taking every small edge I can find.  They get frustrated and usually go off when I outdraw them on a hand that I played aggressively.  It makes me smile, because I know that means I’m playing the way I should.

Today’s highlights:

tilt-o-whirl said, “well played moron”
tilt-o-whirl said, “u fk joke”
tilt-o-whirl said, “got to love the fish”
tilt-o-whirl said, “unreal”
tilt-o-whirl said, “the fk moron wins with a9″
tilt-o-whirl said, “thjs is a total fk joke”
tilt-o-whirl said, “u bet 99″
tilt-o-whirl said, “fk ******”

The last one was particularly amusing.  I raised 99 UTG+1 and he three-bet me.  I check-called an AJTr flop and he checked behind when the tun was another Ace.   I really thought I might fold a better hand, so I bet the river Ace.  He called with 88.  Somehow I’m the idiot for raising 99 and apparently 3 betting 88 from MP1 was a strong play.  He spewed a bit over $1,000 while I was at the table.

I had another good day results-wise.  I booked about $900 in profit and I’m over 5,000 VPPs for the month.   More importantly, I feel on top of my game again.  I’ve started to do some thinking about the proper no-limit short-stacking strategy.  I think that 6 max is the best place to short stack because of the greatly increased aggression at those tables.  I’m pretty sure that the strategy explained by Ed Miller is too tight at most 6-max tables.  I started looking most closely at two variables:

1)  What range of hands can you three-bet shove against what range of opponents?   Against a pretty loose raiser, you can shove surprisingly light over top of his open.   You will be a dog when he calls, but he can’t call very often as a percentage.
2)   I’m opening big, about 5 BBs.  This makes most multi-way flops shovable, depending on how likely their range is to have connected with the flop and how my hand fit in.  Heads-up, it is easy to get all-in when you want to (by the turn at least, even with smallish flop bet sizes) and the elimination of implied odds for the villain simplifies everything a lot.

I’ve seen some terrible short-stackers, which is odd because the basics are pretty easy.  I think a pretty effective strategy can be defined so that you play short-stack like a robot.  You could fairly easily play 12 tables even as a slow moving old guy like me.  I think it would be an awesome way to grind a bunch of  VPPs when you need them.   I’m not going to focus too much on this right now, but it will be a nice thing to add to my game during those slow weekend hours when there are no big games running.

Tweet This Post