They’ve increased the minimum buy-in to 35bb, which I guess is enough to mess up the short stack strategy. They also introduced ‘shallow’ low buy-in games where the maximum buy-in is 40bb. No use to shortstackers at all, but will please the poorer newbie player who doesn’t want to risk a big stack or play capped.

The other big news was the introduction of Rush Poker. Basically when you fold you’re instantly taken to a new table which has a hand being dealt. The idea is you’re continually playing a hand. FTPDoug reckons you’ll play 2 or 3 times as many hands this way. You still get hand histories, but your HUD won’t be able to cope with it. Also sites like pokertableratings won’t be able to track them either. So, downside is you can’t build good reads on your opponents, upside is more exciting and higher rakeback gains. Sounds like fun though, but I can’t see it replacing the grinder’s game of choice (well, maybe? It’ll attract a lot more fish, plus with the rakeback it might change the game a lot?)

They’re going to increase the minimum buy-in on standard tables, but they also have something else up their sleeve that they’re not telling us.

I’ve no idea what that other thing could be. To be honest at NL10 the majority of ‘shortstackers’ are actually people who buy-in small as a stop-loss rather than true shortstack strategy followers. It’s pretty easy to tell them apart as the non-SSS group try to play post-flop (so much fold equity with a 30bb stack lol!), while the SSS lot will frequently shove from the blinds & check-shove. I reckon only 10% of those shortstacks are true SSSers, maybe even less. I guess the situation changes as you go up the stakes (the monetary gain just isn’t worth the tedium of shortstacking NL10 I guess).

Would getting rid of the stop-loss shortstackers from NL10 be a good thing? It might be that forcing them to play with larger stacks will allow us to profit more. However they’re likely to go bust quicker, so will that reduce the fish pool at the nanostakes?

Results from cash games has been ok, mainly because I’ve moved back to NL10;

Those nasty sharp swings in the middle was my experiment at shortstacking NL50 to see how quickly I could clear a bonus. I was lucky to get away with only a mild loss of $14 and it was clearly not a good idea to push a bonus outside your bankroll. The 2nd half of that chart is NL10, and the monetary boost is clear to see. Still very swingy though – I half wish I had a more consistent style, but on the other hand rollercoasters are a lot more fun.

The big result was the $2 180man tourney win which boosted the bankroll by $70, giving a total  of $100 wins in tournament results.

Bonuses came to $20 (Full Tilt holiday bonus – hopefully I’ll clear at least another $20 before it expires), and about $18 in rakeback. So final total of $180 for November – a huge boost to the bankroll and long overdue. Tomorrow I’ve those MTTs as well, and just getting to the cash in the Turbo Takedown will be about $70, so as long as I can get a result I’ll be happy. I’m not holding my breath though, my tournament success is random at best.

So, on to the big lifetime result;

Quite disapointing to have been playing poker for so long and not really getting the hang of nanostakes. I think I’m back on track again, and my NL10 progress should be similar to that early rise (perhaps not so steep – it was a heater on the whole). I’m confident that from now on it’s just a matter of time & grinding to get to NL25 & NL50.

Also the chart doesn’t really reflect my true bankroll – it doesn’t include tournament results, bonuses or rakeback – plus it only goes back to July 2008, and I’ve played longer than that. In reality I’ve probably redeposited about 4 times ($250 or so), then that heater after which I cashed out $170, and then from $30 (donated by S1ndr0me and Yegor!) rebuilt my account to $330. I suspect that means I’m actually in the black when it comes to true lifetime poker results, but I’ve no proof…

The downside is that it’s harder to multitable 6max since your turn comes around so much quicker, but 8 is still within my capability (at least for this SSS stuff where my VP$IP plummets to 15%).

So I started clicking away, and it quickly became obvious that this was going to be a high variance thing and I was way out of my bankroll comfort zone. I was immediately surprised how readily people called your shoves, even when you hadn’t entered a pot for the last 30 hands. I started out taking as many pots as I lost, but then a few went awry and I started to doubt what I was doing. So I stopped after only 20 minutes.

End result was a loss of only $14 which was remarkably good considering how much luck was involved – ridiculously this was actually offset by an accident when I was setting things up – I had installed Windows 7 the day before and Full Tilt still had its default settings. So I turned on autorebuy but messed up the 20bb setting, which resulted in me sitting at a table with a full $50 stack! I was folded to on the BB, and then in the button had KQs so thought I’d at least see the flop. I then took it down on a cbet, netting me $10! (I then quickly left the table!). So net result -$4 I guess PokerTracker all-in ev claimed I was $50 under ev, but I think  it got confused by a threeway pot where I had QQ and so did one of the opponents…

On checking the bonus I’d cleared a few more dollars and it seemed that it matched up to general opinion that it’d take 7000 hands at NL50 to clear $100. I realised that playing 7k high variance hands just isn’t the way to clear a bonus…

So I switched back to my regular 4 tables of 100bb buy-in 6 max, now at NL10. After an hour and 380 hands I’d won about $30, and this only went to confirm that trying to play 7000 break-even hands just to clear $100 is a very stupid thing to do. Best to just accept the bonus and then ignore it – anything you clear is literally just a bonus!

I then had a break and came back for another 300 hands, but didn’t really improve much (all I achieved was halving the BB/100);

The problem is that these microstakes just don’t generate enough frequent player points to clear the bonus effectively. For instance Last night I had an hour long session at NL10 on 3 tables – this cleared about $2 of the bonus. I’ve a month to clear $100 – not going to happen! Fortunately it comes in $10 payments so I should clear some of it (maybe half?), but it’s frustrating to see that free money just out of reach.

This is where a happy coincidence of my rakeback research and some correspondence with S1ndr0me this morning comes together for a possible solution;

Clearing the bonus is linked to frequent player points (or Full Tilt Points), which are 1 point for every $1 paid in rake. Full Tilt uses the dealt method for rake (see my last post), so you don’t actually have to put any money in the pot to be attributed with that rake, you just have to have the cards dealt to you.

So, if you sat at a higher stakes full ring table and played super tight (QQ+), you’d be clearing that bonus far faster than if you played your normal 6max manic shove fest at NL5. To make it cost effective though, you have to avoid losing too many blinds, otherwise your losses will be more than the bonus you’re trying to clear.

So what would it take to be worthwhile. It has to be a ‘dealt method’ rake site obviously. You obviously have to be absolutely self-controlled. Playing hands out of your bankroll is going to be suicidal – the aim of this exercise is to be dealt lots of hand and lose nothing, not to win $$$. The loss will come from two things – losing your blinds, and losing the hands you do play. The latter is usual shortstack strategy – you’ll only be playing premiums like QQ+, which will at least win you the blinds. The former is not so easy since as a short stack you’ll have almost no fold equity and so stealing from late position isn’t going to be so easy. That means it’s possible to have a stack that’s *too* small. Playing above your bankroll the big drain will be the blinds, so it’s a fine balance between a safe stack size and the gain from the rake. The usual 20bb may be enough, but it’ll be the absolute minimum. However increasing it to improve your fold equity also increases your losses when those premo hands get sucked out on.

To sum up the strategy, table select the tables with the highest average pot. It has to be full ring obviously (Edit: not so obvious actually – the dealt rake is split between the players, so a FR player has 1/9 of the rake in a pot, while a 6max player has 1/6 – the balance comes down to loss due to blinds versus gain from less players. I’ll have to think about this). I’m undecided as to whether it should be 20bb or 50bb buy-ins – I’ll need to experiment as to whether 20bb has any stealing potential or not (possibly there’s a reason to pick the nittiest tables too, but not sure yet). SSS strategy has to be followed religiously, although I’d drop all unpaired hands other than AK, and PP under TT – having said that some risks would have to be taken to steal blinds from the button (actually CO maybe more effective since everyone knows the BTN is on a steal). Equally leaving the table on doubling up is also mandatory.

All that’s left is to try it out. If it works on this Full Tilt holiday bonus then it may be worthwhile signing up at the other ‘dealt method’ sites (Cake does it I believe), and do a bit of early bonus whoring. While being at microstakes the boost this would give my BR would be far more meaningful than when I’m doing ‘standard’ bonus whoring at NL100+.

However, I did mentioned this to S1ndr0me, and he’s tried the short stack strategy on and off and doesn’t think it’s a good idea. I can see where he’s coming from since SSS is fairly high variance really. I’ll proceed with caution I guess…

Edit: for those landing here from Google, my results from trying it out are here.