S06E10 - Short Stack Bankroll Building Strategy - Low Stakes Poker - Low Limit Cash Games

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, welcome into another episode of the lolomit Cash Games podcast,
focusing exclusively on the lowest Stakeshold them at your local
card room. Maybe you're playing in a home game. Glad
to have you here, trying to help you make your
game better, get into profitability, or increase your profitability, or
just overall enjoy poker more. Things are more fun when
you understand them better. That's just how it works. So

(00:25):
not going to get into business, per our agreement that
we made like a year and a half ago, but
I do want to let you know up front because
I don't want to make sure you don't miss it.
You can now sign up for a free level over
at low limitcashgames dot com. That's a you know, a
shortcut link to my Patreon account and if you just
follow me for free, you need a Patreon account, then

(00:46):
you can follow me for free and I'm releasing free
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that happen, and then maybe throw in some kind of
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So if you're up for some added bonus free stuff,
you can follow me over on the Patreon without joining

(01:07):
any tier. Of course, there's tears that we'll do more.
We'll talk about that at the end of the podcast.
Today's podcast is brought on by boy. I don't know
how many messages I've gotten over the past three or
four months about short stacking. It's also come up in
my Patreon only a discord that we have a few times.

(01:29):
Can I short stack to build up a bankroll? So
a lot of people they take poker very seriously, but
they just don't have the bankroll. And obviously, if you
don't have a winning record, you're not going to get staked.
Then I don't recommend getting staked anyway at low stakes.
I mean, you're not going to be making that much
money to begin with, and having to give away a
significant portion of your earnings to a staker is not

(01:50):
going to be conducive to you enjoying the game, trust me.
So I've been asked a few things like is short
stacking a good strategy to build a bankroll? And I
would answer that question yes with a caveat or two.
First caveat would be you have to be a person
with great discipline and a person who's willing to play

(02:12):
a very boring form of poker, folding a ton of hands.
You're not in there getting all the glory of stacking
somebody with the suited connector. Rarely, if ever, you're not
getting all the glory of getting in there and stacking
somebody with pocket douces. Rarely, if ever. I mean you know,
times will present themselves occasionally where that might be possible,

(02:34):
but for the most part, that's not what you're going
to be about. You're going to be in there playing
really good hands, very aggressively, and looking to get stacks in. Often.
By often, I mean often in relation to the number
of hands you play, not often in terms of we're
always getting it in. But you're going to be playing
a very small percentage of hands, and out of those

(02:56):
small percentage of the times that you actually play a hand,
you will be looking to get it in a very
high percentage of those. And it's a very effective strategy.
It is a relatively low variance version. It's low bankroll friendly,
but it's just boring. It's very boring. People aren't going
to like you. I don't like playing with short stacks.

(03:18):
They make my job very difficult. If I'm at a
table and I'm in a position where normally I'd be
opening a pretty wide range in later positions and stuff.
But I have this short stacker who knows what they're
doing and they're three betting effectively and looking to get
stacks in. It just really kurtaeils my ranges in what
I plan to do in late position. I don't like them.

(03:41):
That being said, most people, even good players, profitable players,
don't know how to deal with short stackers effectively. They
don't understand a lot of times on flop stets, short
stackers are just priced in for draws and stuff with
some hands that they play and they're just not folding it,
so they'll be trying to you know, bluff or over

(04:03):
bed or just just just a whole host of ways
that they play shortstackers poorly. So that makes it very
profitable for you. And then of course, the people who
are clueless about poker, they never are going to play
you properly to begin with, so it can be highly profitable.
I'm reminded of a couple of things, and I've told
this story a few times, and apologies if this episode

(04:24):
goes a little bit long. I am gonna just hit
the high points and the overall basics. There's a lot
of details about ranges and BET sizes and three BET
sizes and stuff that I'm going to leave down in
the text portion of the podcast. So most podcasting apps
you use will have the information text section down below,

(04:45):
and you'll be able to see it if for some
reason you don't see it there. If you're the app
you use does not you know, accumulate that dowta and
bring it in, you can always just go over to
you can always just go over to a different podcasting

(05:05):
app and use it. I know it's kind of annoying,
but what else can I say. So one of the
stories I've told is about this older lady who is
you know, close to me, has been close to me,
who lives down in Tampa, and several years ago asked
me to help her with a strategy so she could

(05:27):
add to her Social Security income and meager savings that
she had so she retired. She tried on Social Security
and like she doesn't have she didn't have like a
big retirement plan otherwise, but she did have some meager
savings that could help her, you know, boost times that
she might come up short with her Social Security check
and she asked me, you know, can I play poker

(05:48):
and supplement it. I don't care about making a lot
of money. If I just made a thousand dollars a month,
I'd be happy with it. Fifteen hundred dollars a month,
I'd be ecstatic about it. Even five hundred dollars a month,
I would just be incredibly at about it. And I'm like,
for sure, you could do that. So we started her
on a short stacking plan and she playing fifty big
blind stacks, and within a very short period of time

(06:11):
she starts doing very well, and she still does it.
It's a job to her. She you know, worked her
whole life. She knows that jobs aren't supposed to be
fun and exciting and thrilling, so she wasn't really looking
in to that. She just wanted to be able to
show up to work every day and work her own hours.

(06:32):
And I have to worry about showing up on days that
she didn't feel well or maybe she did want to
go do something with her family. And it's worked out
really well for her. She you know, I'm not going
to get into her finances and everything, but she accomplishes
the goal she wants to accomplish. Every month. She's been
doing it now for several years. And you know, if
she were somebody that were looking to build a bankroll,
like that may be your goal. Where you have a

(06:54):
job and you're working and you're paying your bills and
you're trying to save some money to build your bankroll,
you could also be doing a short sacking strategy and
you could be growing your bankroll from there. You just
continue to cycle that money through until you get a
bankroll big enough you could play a little bit differently.
I also have a guy who used to years ago
in my local poker room, would play a short sacking

(07:14):
strategy and he had I guess a mentor that showed
him how to do it, and he did very well
at it. He doesn't play that way anymore. He's a
he's a reasonably good poker player, I guess when he
wants to be as a tendency to gamble. But so
I have clear examples of it, and it's sure for
sure a viable strategy. So I'm going to hit the

(07:37):
overall components to the core strategy, some general guidelines and stuff,
and then if you want specifics ranges, pre flop raising sizes,
three bit sizings and all this type stuff. You're gonna
have to look down in the text and information section
in your podcasting app for that. And if for some
reason it doesn't show up or something like that, you know,

(07:58):
shoot me a message on either Instagram or Facebook. It's
a low limit cash games podcast con find me there
and I'll try to help get it to you, but
hopefully it'll just shop in your house. So let's get
into it. What's the core strategy? How do you do
this short stacking type of play to build a bankroll?
So the core strategy is pretty simple. You want to

(08:18):
be aggressive and value oriented, that's it. You're just looking
to play a lot of value hands. You're looking to
be very aggressive with them. You're looking to avoid marginal
spots and trying to pull off post flock heroics like
bluffs and hero calls and all this kind of stuff.
And you're going to exploit the deeper stacks at the
table who just over value hands that they have post flop,

(08:41):
and since you're short stacked, they just will refuse to
get away from hands where they're clearly behind. But basically,
your fold equity plus your value, you're going to combine
it together. And that's going to be your edge. So
there's going to be spots where you know you'll be
playing a hand, sometimes in a spot where you know
you flop a pretty big draw or something of that

(09:02):
of that sort, and your stack size will just dictate
that you'll be shoving in a lot because it'll just
be giving you direct odds to just draw to your hand,
whereas if you were a lot deeper it would be
a lot more complicated. Some real general guidelines for how
to play the strategy. You know, anytime you've raised or
three bat and you're seeing a flop, you want to

(09:24):
be sea beatting a pretty decent percentage of the time
when the board's very dry and disconnected and stuff. And
then when you make it to turns, you want to
be making kind of a jam or fold spot. Your
spr should be lower at that point spr is stacked
to pot ratio, but if it's going to be you know,
for sure less than three, like less than two and

(09:44):
a half, especially as it gets down to two. Stuff
like that. When you get to these turns, you'll need
to be making the decision on the turn based on
your hand and what's going on. You just be jamming
it or folding it most of the time, and your
stacked pot ratio will dictate that you don't everyone to
be slow playing top pairs and hands better like two

(10:05):
pairs and things like that. Be ready to play for
stacks and just look to pilot in if you can
pilot it on the flop, pilot in, if you can
pilot it on the turn pilot in. You want to
value bet when you're against fish with very thin value,
so you know top pair, second kicker, top pair, third
kicker type hands. You know fish will call you down

(10:27):
very light. So if you can recognize those players, you
can bet those with not necessarily the most premium of hands,
just you know the old top pair hands will do
not even with top kicker. And you just rarely, if
ever want to bluff, like the spots you'll be bluffing

(10:48):
in will be very slim. I guess maybe your continuation
bets when you miss or you flop some kind of
equity and it's a semi bluff type thing, be mostly
the extent of your bluffing. We're just not looking to
run things like that. There's no fancy schmancy post flot play.
There's no fancy smancy pre flat play, we're playing very
strong hands, we're playing them very aggressively, and there we're
looking to hit flops and stuff where we can either

(11:09):
get it in on flops or get it in on turns.
So we'll talk about the stacked pot ratio a little bit.
So we'll just think of it as zones. If your
spr is in the one to two range, you're just
gonna be stacking off with one pair of hands, good
one pair hands, so over pairs, top pair, top kicker
type hands, that stuff, you're just going to be stacking off.
I mean, you got fifty big ones that that's what

(11:31):
you're doing. As you get a little deeper, maybe you
have a three to five stacked to pot ratio, you
be a little bit more cautiously. You can fold these
top pair top kicker type hands. When you're facing really
big aggression from like knits or players who are play
very face up, like when they're betting and betting big,
they got it. Obviously. If you're against some kind of

(11:53):
an ag lagger type person, you know, maybe you consider
call them in spots like that, but that will require
you really pay attention to who you're playing and when
you're lots deeper, so your SPO is a lot deeper,
will say, greater than five or something. You just don't
want to be stucking off unless you've got like sets, straights, flushes,
combo draws, you know, fifteen out plus draws, things like that.

(12:18):
When you're in the hand versus very loose players, very
passive players, you want to be able to be really tight.
You want to value bet them relentlessly, and you're just
not going to be bluffing these people. Just don't bluff them.
They're not folding up, folding middle pairs, some of them
won't full bottom pair. It's just now point and bluffing
these people. And then the opposites. When you're in the
hand versus your typical aggressive type rag so these are

(12:40):
usually considered the better players at the table. They may
or may not be winners. You want a three bet
very much tighter. You want to be kind of trapping them,
getting them to bet at you, when you're at very
top of rains and spots where you can do that.
The reason I say that is because you'll never be
so deep that trapping gets you into a lot of trouble.
Like you can trap some flots sometimes with bottom two

(13:01):
and bottom set on a lot of times when normally
you maybe you would be considered raising. What people don't
really understand is, you know when when you have like
you say, pocket sixes and the flop comes like you know,
King ninety six with two hearts and your opponent's you know,
has a lot or just say ace ace nine six

(13:21):
or something, so your opponent has a lot of acex
or King x, and they're probably betting for value. You know,
when you're deep running deep normal sized stacks, you'll be
raising that off on the flop because it's hard for
them to fold those big hands like that, and you
want to be trying to get all the money in somehow,
like we need to start building the bot really big.
When you're starting out with fifty big mines, getting all
the money in is not a problem. It's she's not

(13:42):
going to be that hard and they're never going to
be reverse adding you that much for hitting stuff on you.
The times that you know, like to just call with
your you know, bottom set or middle set or something
rather than shipping it. But still mostly you do want
to be getting it in anytime you think you can
get in and get called. When you have a handle

(14:02):
on that for sure, do it rules aside to throw
it out in the window and do a lot more
check raising in spots that you can, because this will
allow you to either just get it in on the
flop for sure, get it on the turn, because again
that's your goal. Your goal is to do a lot
of getting it in on the flop and getting in
it on the turn. So that's kind of like the
general overall strategy. So now in the text portion of

(14:25):
this podcast, I posted some what I think your decent
opening ranges. I posted it for a nine handed game,
so if you're playing it one of these places it
plays eight handed games under the gun, one will be
here under the gun. But if you're playing in a
nine handed game, under the gun is under the gun.
But you'll notice I've got like an eight percent range
for under the gun, like he's very very tight. And

(14:48):
then I think something that maybe I left out. Maybe
I'll add it in the the text session, but I
think that I I did put it in here. But
you want to be you want to be in here
check raising pre fought with a very very very linear
range like top of range. You don't want to be
in here. Three bet bluffing like you're not deep enough

(15:09):
stacks for that, you don't have enough playability for that.
So there's none of this. So I'm gonna three bet
him with the Ace five suited. There's none of this,
so I'm gonna three bet him with the five six suited. Sometimes,
you know, leave all that for the full size stacks
and you just three bet linear ranges. And I know
what you're thinking, Boy, I'll become predictable. People will start
folding to me. I won't get any action. I mean,

(15:32):
so you know, after some period of time you may
start seeing some of that, but people will still continue
to give you action. Like maybe some people will back
off on giving you action, but there'll still be plenty
of people that will give you action. The bigger the
room you play in, the less an issue that is,
the smaller room you play in, the more of an
issue that is. But that just comes along with playing
short stack, dude. That's just a function of the style

(15:55):
that you are choosing to play, and so you just
accept it as part of it. So if you look
down in the notes section or whatever, we're gonna have
those opening ranges for you. We're gonna have some pre
flop raise sizings, and some guidelines and stuff for three
betting and position out of position and stuff like that,
and a little bit of stuff on playing post flop,
how to navigate maybe through low spr's highest prs, you know,

(16:20):
jam spots and things like that. I'm not going to
go through that on the pod because i still want
the pod to be really long. So I hope that's
answered all the many questions I've gotten about short stacking,
especially short sacking as it applies to trying to use
it to build a bankroll when you just don't have
the bankroll that you really need right now. A reminder,
I would invite you to come over to Lowland cash

(16:42):
games dot com. That's a short code we've set up
to get you to my Patreon site, so you don't
have to memorize the name of the Patreon lowlanmitcash games
dot com. By the way, all these links are down
in the information section below, So come on over. We've
just set up this new free tier, so all you
got to do is have a Patreon account and then
you can just follow my account and you will see
the stuff I'm starting to put up for free. We

(17:03):
got the five dollars tier. If you're a fan of
the pod, if you want to get a detailed, actionable,
high quality information help you improve your game and get
better every single Sunday of the month, then it's just
five bucks and I really appreciate it. Keeps me inspired
to keep coming up with things every single Sunday. Let
me tell you, I've been doing this for four or
five years now. It's hard to keep coming up with

(17:25):
stuff like it's not garbage, it's really hard. And so
you know, just your five dollars chipping in buying me
a cup of coffee thing really keeps me motivated to
keep doing that. So those would be accessed in a
different type way, but that's over there. Obviously are full
blown training with the videos and the pods and all
that type stuff. Is just twenty five dollars a month.

(17:47):
Twenty five dollars a month. That's half or less of
anybody out there doing this. How do I do it
that cheap? Because by information isn't any good because it's garbage. No,
it's because I'm a one man show. I produce all
the I don't hire anybody to produce content. I don't
pay web designers, I don't pay for web hosting, I
don't pay for credit card processing. I don't pay for

(18:09):
text to come fix problems. Like Patreon handles all about
stuff for me. Now, it's a little annoying sometimes when
somebody comes to me with an issue with logging, like
I had that happen today. Somebody came to me, well,
I got to I want to use a different email address,
and I'm like, look, I don't know anything about that.
Patreon handles that. That's how I make this so cheap,
So contact their support and they'll help you through it.
I wish I could help you, but I just can't.

(18:31):
I don't handle any of that touch stuff. And then,
of course we have the top tier, which is the
one on one coaching tier. I got to tell you,
people stay in that for very long periods of time.
Most of the people are highly successful. In the history
of me doing it, I've only ever had one person
drop out immediately. I had a guy, I guess it's
probably been a year and a half ago now joined
for a month and left. He was very argumentative and combative.

(18:54):
It kind of seemed like he wanted to teach me
how to play. I don't know it wasn't a fit.
I didn't make it leave he left on it zon.
I've had people that have been in that tier for
year and a half, have people that's been in that
year tier for two years. A couple of them are
so good. I'm like, I don't know why you keep
paying me one hundred dollars a month. And they always say,

(19:14):
the advice you give and they help you give, and
these sessions are making me one hundred dollars a month,
so it's not really cost them anything. So spots don't
come up often. For the one hundred dollars tier. I
keep them very limited. Right now. I have them limited
to eight, and I think i've I mean, it's the
most I've ever had. Sometimes I'll just I'll drop it
down to six because I don't want to over extend,
don't want to be able to give you a ton
of my time. Of course, you get access to the

(19:34):
discord and all that in any of the tiers. So
Low Lemon Cash Games dot Com love to have you
over there. Let me try to help you become a
winning poker player at your card room and your home game.
We're coming up on the twenty minute mark, which is
my goal. For these pods. We've nailed it again today.
Look forward to talking to you in the next episode.
We'll see you then

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S06E10 - Short Stack Bankroll Building Strategy - Low Stakes Poker

Episode Transcript

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