Recently I have had some thoughts on the amount of the buy-in while playing cash. First of all I am not a CG-player, even though I started of there many years ago, so I would very much like to get some feedback on this. It´s only an idea I want to test. Nowadays I only play CG while on tilt in order to get away some steam.
It is a common idea in CG that you should always buy-in the maximum. The main reason for this of course being that when you hit you will win the maximum amount. Of course you have to be a winning player to begin with, if you tend to loose anyway, butter buy in for less to limit your loss. In a ring game I do not challenge that, even though I think a really good player could make it profitable to buy for less and play very aggressive. How annoying isn´t the microstacks and short stacks at the table when you are big and trying to control the table?
My idea is that when playing CG at medium stakes, heads up, it could be very profitable to make a smaller buy-in. I will explain why.
I once sat down at a 5-10 stake heads up table. He had 1700, I went in for 300. The interesting thing here is that even though he has a 5,5:1 chip ratio advantage, I still have thirty blinds which is quite some for a sit and go-player. If I think that I have a 3:1 shot to take away all his money from him, the risk/reward ratio is awesome.
Main advantages:
1. When you are short but not micro, if you are an aggressive player not afraid of playing back at the bully, I think you have a serious advantage. If you are both deep, that advantage is taken away and it could be difficult to slowly wear him down. When you are rather short your resteals are great percentage plays.
2. The bigger stack will many times commit to much chips for a too weak a hand. Probably he is a guy that sits there everyday waiting for someone to play with him. When someone comes in short that might annoy him, and if he knows that you are aggressing him he can pay with very marginal hands. Especially because his stack is so much bigger than yours. If you manage to get a guy all in with A8 against TT you can´t ask for more.
3. The psychological affect of losing against the small stack can be devastating. If you doubble up on him when you started 1700-300, then you are already at 1400-600, if you doubble again you get the chip lead. If you loose 300 you loose 300, end of story, but if you loose half your big stack to some annoying short stack, that could be pretty frustrating.
4. Buying in for a small amount will disguise you. The opponent will surely think that you are a poor player, most people that buy-in for a small amount are often poor players.
5. Finally you have a very good risk/reward ratio. If you play better than him, you can take 1700 away from him, by only risking 300. If you come in with 1700, you can loose all but still only win 1700, even though you have better chances at winning, you also have more to loose.
Disadvantages
1. The main disadvantage of course is that you cannot get full value of your hands when you do hit. This is a major problem and has to be weighed against the benefits of aggressive short stack play. The difference however between ring games and HU, is that HU is more about getting good reads and making good marginal plays
2. You have to be familiar with this particular way to play
3. I am not a CG-player, so I would like you to fill in the pro and cons.
If you play big and if you win, please share your thoughts! Thomas??
Hope it could be somehow useful for someone.
Beau travail! Merci bcp!
