This is an edited excerpt from Rolf Slotboom's brand-new book Secrets of Professional Pot-Limit Omaha. In this book, Rolf describes and analyzes, in depth, two specific strategies. One is a tight, sandbagging, minimum buy-in approach based on exploiting to the fullest the overaggression of some (even very good) players. The second approach is a more loose-aggressive, attacking one. It focuses on playing a large stack correctly - with the ultimate goal of breaking the weaker players (in the book, described as "targets") in one single hand.
In this two-part series, Rolf analyzes three potential problems and dangers associated with the big-stack approach - especially in shorthanded online games. The focus is on a $10-$20 blinds online game with a $2,000 maximum buy-in.
Danger No. 3: The problems you face against bigger stacks than yours
While we are talking about big-stack play here, the fact remains that even a $2,000 maximum buy-in does not automatically qualify as "big." One or two weak players whom you are eager to break may already have stacks of $4,000, $6,000, or even $8,000. And unlike brick-and-mortar casino play, in online games, you can't reach into your pockets between hands and take out as much money as you want in order to cover them. Yet, your goal is to go after their entire stacks and break them. In this situation, quite a few good players take a few more chances than usual in order to build their stacks to about the same level as the stacks of the weak players. While I reason a bit like that myself, it should be clear that this situation carries quite a bit of risk. Even if we manage to complete phase one successfully (building our stacks enough so that we can cover our "targets"), we still have phase two to complete. And the following things can go wrong:
• Online, things can go very fast. Unlike live play, in which you can often make an educated guess, online, you almost never know how long people are intending to stay. For one thing, the weak player with the big stack may reason: "I have just won quite a few pots by getting lucky. There's no need to push my luck here. I am simply going to hit and run." Or, he may decide to stay until he thinks "the tide may have started to turn now." This means that by the time that
you have built your stack, by, strictly speaking, taking far too many chances,
he may have left the table already. As a result, you simply will have made too many negative expected value decisions (a clear downside), while the upside of these decisions does not even exist: Your target has already left the table before you have been offered even the
chance to take his entire stack.
• In high-stakes play, and especially
shorthanded high-stakes play, tables often consist of quite a few good, knowledgeable, winning players, and just one or two weak players whose money they are after. If a table has just one or two soft spots and those players decide to sit out for a while, some of the good players may follow suit by sitting out, as well, waiting for the contributors to return. Usually, the end result will be that you continue to play heads up against a strong player in order to keep the game alive (which, if you are not that good at heads-up play, could prove to be a
very costly decision), or the table breaks. Now, if you have been "gambling" a bit too much in order to be able to cover the weak players, and the table breaks, this is a horrible result for you. This is even more horrible, because at any other table you go to, you can start with only your maximum buy-in again, $2,000, and not with the entire stack that you may have built.
What you want is to build a big stack and have the play last for a very long time, so that at all times (barring unusual and unwanted developments),
you will be the one who covers the table. But because of the fast changes in Internet games, this strategy has some clear drawbacks. So, you should usually try to increase your stack size
only by making positive expected value decisions, and realize that the concept of "taking a few chances now in order to reap the benefits later" does not have all that much value.
Secrets of Professional Pot-Limit Omaha is available at all major online gaming stores, including Amazon and Conjelco. More information is available at the site of the publisher, www.dandbpoker.com, and at Rolf's site, www.rolfslotboom.com.
