Marcus Bateman / Marcus Bateman / 27 January 2009 / Leave a comment

When you sit down at a cash table you immediately have a choice between how much to buy in for. Most online sites allow you to buy in for between twenty and one hundred big blinds, most casinos allow you to buy in around the same amount at the low end (usually no lower than twenty big blinds), but often a lot more at the high end, sometimes allowing players to buy in with up to a thousand big blinds.

Buying in short also disguise your ability to an extent, as many players believe buying in short is usually a sign of weakness, and or bad bankroll management, and that anyone doing it will often be very poor

There are pros and cons to buying in short or deep, and here I want to look at some advantages of buying in short.

The first and most important advantage is that your life is made a great deal easier. Short stacked poker is a much simpler game than deep stacked poker because your decisions are limited to only two or three streets of betting. You never have to face that large bet on the river with a decent hand, as you will already be all in. You also limit the sort of hands your opponent should be playing, as hands like suited connectors and small pairs are very weak against short stacks due to the lack of implied odds. If you believe that the players in the game are better than you it is often worth buying in short just to observe the game for a while - at least you know you will not be facing any hard choices early on.

Buying in short also disguise your ability to an extent, as many players believe buying in short is usually a sign of weakness, and or bad bankroll management, and that anyone doing it will often be very poor. This can lead you to get excess action not only when playing short, but also if you run up a stack, as the players wrong belief that you are weak for buying in short will continue to play on their minds. This can be especially true live, where players ego and attention are much more focused on small details.

Playing a short stack live also has another major advantage - you will hardly ever be asked to back players if they habitually see you playing a short stack. If players consistently see you playing short, you look like your just another struggling player (despite the fact that playing short can be just as profitable as playing deep), and this can lead to people not seeing you as a soft target for loans etc.

Buying in short can be a great way to scout out a game, make your life easy, and keep a low profile. It does have its disadvantages though, as we shall see next time in 'buying in deep'.

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