Protecting your bankroll with short buyins

Some writers, Ed Milller in particular, advocates buying in short as a way to protect your bankroll. It's complete nonsense.

It might work to protect your bankroll if you're a losing player.

--- I have an errand to run. I'll have to finish this post later. Go ahead and share your thoughts on the subject while I'm gone.

UPDATE:
A commenter took issue with my suggestion that short buyins might help protect your bankroll if you're a losing player. He said, "most deep stacks don't know how to play against an aggressive SS".

Okay, that might be true, but that doesn't mean that you can protect your bankroll by using short buys even if you're a winning player otherwise. It's possible that a loser with deep stacks can convert himself into a winner by playing short stacks if he has opponents who don't know how to play against a short stack.

So even if playing a short stack might improve your lot, that doesn't mean you won't improve even more by just learning to play better and keeping a big stack.

If you're a winning player with a big stack then you'll give up a huge edge by reducing your stack size. Reducing your stack size is reducing the size of the game (for you). In no limit games your win is usually going to be expressable as a percentage of your stack size. If you cut your stack size by 90% your hurting your win in a big way even if cutting your stack will double your percentage win.

A $100 stack with a growth expectation of 20% is more profitable than a $20 stack with a growth expectation of 150%

----- I'm being called for supper, I"ll have to finish this later.

Loose no-limit hold-em games

There's a short thread on rgp about playing in loose no-limit hold'em games.

Like many of such threads, some of the advice is really bad, some is pretty good.

Here's the original question in its entirety.

What is the best way to play a loose no-limit table, a
lot of limping, frequent raises with mediocre hands?

Here's the non-responsive response from one of the resident experts.

The big question is what do you mean by loose? Loose preflop, loose
passive, loose aggressive? Loose the whole way down? Do you get people
who will raise any 2, or people who call any 2? Saying "loose NLHE game"
isn't very descriptive.

If that's all the original question would have said then he's right. But that's not all he said. First of all it's very clear the question is just about pre-flop hand selection. That's a fairly easy question to answer without having to worry much about post-flop behaviors.

He's talking about a field that plays a lot of hands and does a lot of pre-flop raising and a lot of calling those pre-flop raises.

In such a game you should pay more attention to position. Play tighter in front, but play more hands from in back. Be willing to call multiway raises from the back. With a large stack be more willing to play for implied odds (play more hands). Especially if another large stack is playing from early position. If you have a large stack on your left be more careful if you have a large stack. (that's part of what it means to play position)

UPDATE:
As the rgp thread progressed it became clear that I probably misunderstood the original poster's question. I had interpreted his "a lot of limping, frequent raises with mediocre hands" as a description of table conditions. It's more likely he meant that as a proposed answer to his own question of how to play at a loose table.

If that's correct then he's describing a passive table (you can't do a lot of limping if it's not a passive table).

My answer of "pay attention to position" still isn't far off, but it's not as critical as it would be at a more aggresive table.

Pay attention to stack sizes

Here's a post from rec.gambling.poker.

>
> A curious thing happend the other day while playing at a no-limit hold'em
> game,
> and I'm now seeking some clarification regarding betting rules. Here is what
> happened. Everyone called my raise preflop. Flop comes down. I'm first to
> act
> and I bet $50. Person to the left of me calls $50. Last person to act
> re-raises all-in for $68. At this point I try to reraise all-in for another
> $300 over the top to get rid of the first caller ... club tells me I cannot
> reraise in that situation, I can only fold or call the extra $18. Club tells
> me
> I cannot reraise because the first raise was an incomplete bet, and
> essentially
> I would be raising myself ... anyone have any other (better) explanation ?

Not really.

A term used is "re-opening the betting". The betting is only re-opened if
there's a raise. When you bet 50, it takes a $50 raise to reopen the betting.
No one can raise less than that unless that's all the chips they have, in which
they go allin and you have to match their allin amount to remain active. It's
just the rule. There is no explanation. The "raising yourself" language is
must some mumbling that doesn't really have any meaning.

It's one of the reasons it's important to pay attention to stack sizes. If you
had some reason to think he's likely to raise you might have wanted to have bet
$30 instead of $50, giving him a chance to make a full raise so you can trap
intermediate callers for your re-raise, for example.