strange stuff on the short-stacking front to report. for those that say there isnt much of a difference between 10NL and 25NL, i beg to differ. sure, both players tend to suck, but the 25NL players are a bit tighter, have learned to 3bet a little more, float big time, raise cbettable boards a little, and will bomb you with a bet the minute you check and look like you are giving up oop.

some would say "dont play oop, then." well, duh. but not as easy when your AK has whiffed and the board is 5c 9c Th 7h. thats a pretty good spot to give up on your AK, but you get blasted with a 2/3 pot bet, and still may be best. after all, he called your raise and only plays 12% of his hands. for me at least, a fairly common situation right now. but, whatever.

i got to doing a TON of thinking, and may take Euph's suggestion and drop off to 50 bbs as my BI. here is some of the reasoning and "tweaking" i have been playing with on paper...

if it is standard that you can call a bet, pf, with 5% implied odds behind in effective stacks, we dont want to carry something over what we are raising as our standard amount. mine has been 5X, for this reason. it also allows me to get it in on most turns in a HU pot. heres an example of how 5X looks.

(60 bb stack) HU pot.
- you open raise for 5X, one caller 5X, 1X (rounded down) in the blinds. pot at 11X (55 left in your stack)
- you come in for full psb on flop for 11X, caller 11X. pot now 33X (44 in stack)
- you pretty much are pushing the turn. maybe you c/r, but its in or out now. and you have a god's plenty FE with the overbet. great, but i am finding only better calls you. again, DUH. my bad.
- i was basing this mostly on 3 way pots, where the turn push is NOT an overbet.

but, take a look at this way...

(50 bb stack) HU pot.
- you open for 3X instead, get a caller at 3X, and 1X blinds. pot at 10X. (47 left in stack)
- you now come in for 3/4 pot on your cbet for 8X, get the caller for 8X. pot at 26X. (39 left)
- look the same? not really (i'll get into why in a minute).
- turn you lead 2/3 for 9X, caller's 9X. pot at 44X (30 left)
- look at your river bet size! 2/3 pot. you are not quite committed, but can call a lot profitably. if you lead, you are going to get called a good bit. but, if you check, to induce a bluff, you have 2.46:1 pot odds to call, or you need to be correct 40% of the time to breakeven.

people say there is no "creativity" in this style. i say, "HA!"

if you c/r the turn, you go all-in, if villain bets a normal size...
- back to turn from above. pot of 26X. you check, and villain bets 15-20X, you bomb him AI w/ your 39X stack. you are throwing 2-2.75X at him. say he fires 20X, you go AI for 39X making the pot 85X. he is getting 4.5:1, barely good enough for flushes and open-enders, but not for pairs with gutters, or overcards alone. but, if he comes at you with only 15X and you c/r all-in, you make the pot 80X. he is calling 24X into 80X, or 3.33:1. in other words, he doesnt have odds to draw to flushes or OE's. and he has NO implieds to make up the difference because we are AI.

just some random thoughts while playing with stacks and bet sizes. please correct my "odds calculations" if they are off. this is the way i understand them, and this isnt my strongest area.

but, look at what else the 3X size does for you. you can open wider, cbet a bit more, encourage callers to take advantage of you because its not a 4-5X raise. if you like to cbet in lp, this may not be a bad idea. and, if you look at the implieds someone needs pf against you to play sc's and other speculatives against your weenie raise, you will see, of a 50bb stack, they need 5%...or 2.5X raises. but we are raising 3-5X depending on limpers. if we can avoid multi-way pots the majority of the time, it stands to reason that they are making poor decisions by calling you, even if they get your stack.

making sense, i hope?