POTD #187 The Debut of Double Up Drive Dan

A simple seeming preflop spot has levels I did not anticipate

A common bit of poker wisdom is that playing deep stacked is harder than playing short stacked. When you get short stacked, you can just go all-in and hope to make the best hand. When you are deep stacked, you need to win the maximum with your best hands, avert disaster with your medium strength hands, and try to steal pots with your worst hands. Like most pieces of poker wisdom I first heard in the aughts, the above is generally true, but has become less true in the solver era.

In fact, one of the most pleasant surprises of learning shallow-stacked poker from solvers is learning how many decision points there can be in hands that used to be all-in or fold preflop. Learning the difference between how to play a 12bb stack and a 15bb stack will not net you the same amount of EV as, say, learning that, 300bbs deep, if you have 98 on QJT rainbow, you need to proceed with caution, but calibrating your short stack game still matters. Part of the struggle is, that it’s not enough to master “a 12bb range”. You need to master each and every 12bb range, depending on the other stacks at your table and the stage of the tournament.

In 2014, I made a video for Run It Once (sign up with code: POTD for 10% off) titled “Stack Distribution and Push/Fold Ranges.” It was, for its time, such a good video that Jason Koon felt the need to comment “Really good video Sam!” While the video is currently out of date, the gist of the video was, when you are short stacked, you can shove wider into deep stacks because they need to call tighter, as they might need to call your shove and fold later in the hand, sacrificing a lot of pot equity in the process. Nowadays, computers and preflop tools are powerful enough and public libraries are deep enough, that there are solutions for thousands of permutations of other stacks when you have 12bbs, and you cannot simply “memorize the charts,” as every chart is a little different. What you need to do is play modern poker: study to develop strong baselines, and adjust your strategies based on the exact situation and how your opponents play. Today and tomorrow, we will look at some preflop spots where I knew what to do if everyone had equal stacks, but I was unsure what to do with unequal stacks and I made the wrong adjustments.

Triton Jeju 2024 - Event #3 25K NLH 8-Handed - SILVER MAIN
(2.5k/5k/5k) (SB/BB/BBA) 200k Starting Stack. 8 Handed

It folds to Dan Smith UTG7 (105k) who makes it 10k, it folds to me in the CO with Q♣️J♣️ (233k) and I make it 50k, everyone behind covers and folds, Dan shoves, I call and lose to his K♠️Q♠️.