Strategies for playing a 20bb stack

[fjuanl]

I have a lot of disorganized thoughts about this and never have been able to find a default preflop strategy that I like. What I'm looking for is something that is the most difficult to play against.

Problems with this stack:

1) If you open too wide, people can resteal a very wide range

2) Its difficult to play postflop because the caller can check/shove semibluff a lot

Adjustments:

1) Open shove to prevent resteals and awkward postflop spots. Raise/fold very infrequently (either by opening less hands or raise/calling a wider range)

Problems with the adjustments:

1) If you decide to shove or fold on 20bbs, its pretty easy for villains to adjust to you and call correctly. You shut out any chance of them making a huge error. The most likely mistake is to call too tightly, which only results in you picking up a small pot more often. But if you get someone tilted, make a minraise and they resteal way more than they should or spew postflop, you get a double up. By shove/folding, you prevent those big mistakes and decrease your winrate.

2) You end up missing a lot of blind stealing opportunities. Raise/folding starts to seem like such a leak that whenever you make an open, you always have a nut hand that's trying to enduce a resteal. Then it becomes really easy to play against you; just fold whenever you open.

The more pots you want to open, the wider your raise/call range has to get. At some point it would become an absurdly high variance strategy where you raise/call really weak hands like A3o, K8s etc.

What now?

There must be something that can be improved right?

[baudib]

I'll take a shot

shove/fold small pairs. discourage restealing when you have 44

I'd rather raise/call with K8s than A3o fwiw

more later

[drmcboy]

can I add problem 3, esp if we call it 20-25 BBs, often stack feels to big to re steal jam, esp over min opens, but flatting is not great either.

some stack size has to be the most difficult I guess?

[donkbee]

With 25 or 20bb, I start looking for spots to 3-bet jam and definitely open less because of all the problems you've stated

[hensonbooker]

There is a big edge to be had buying in for 20 big blinds when your opponents are playing with full stacks, and most of this edge comes preflop. Especially in aggressive games, many players are opening for a raise with hands that would not be correct to play if they knew someone with a short stack that could come behind them.

[drmcboy]

2) Its difficult to play postflop because the caller can check/shove semibluff a lot

Thinking about this more, if this is difficult for us, we should be taking a decent amount of flops and then shoving over opens. So maybe weirdly we open less, but flat a bit more often? Say with scs and bigger suiteds like J8, K9 than might seem like folds? Since I love to flat I'm going to assume this is correct, will try and remember to post some hands where I do it here.

With 25 or 20bb, I start looking for spots to 3-bet jam and definitely open less because of all the problems you've stated

I always feel like 15BB is better to resteal, but 20-25BB is better to squeeze. When I shove 20BBs over an open I don't feel like people fold any more than they would to 15 so it's kinda like they are free rolling those 5 BBs. Depends a bit on structure but you get the idea.

[baudib]

Thinking about this more, if this is difficult for us, we should be taking a decent amount of flops and then shoving over opens. So maybe weirdly we open less, but flat a bit more often? Say with scs and bigger suiteds like J8, K9 than might seem like folds?

This sounds good to me. These types of hands have a lot more suckout equity when opener actually has a hand than the resteal small pp type hands.

[fjuanl]

Yeah anyone who has an interesting hand where the flatted with 20bbs please post here! I don't see many regs doing this but as more and more people start raise/calling thinner, restealing looks worse and flatting looks better

Part of whats tricky about 'playing perfect' preflop is that it seems like we should have a mixed strategy where you have to create a raise/fold range, raise/call range, shove range and fold range. It would be a lot easier to just have a shoving range and a folding range like you would with <10bb's. But like baudib said, there are some hands that are clearly better to open shove (small pairs, other hands that do well against calling ranges). I just cant seem to think of an easy way to make a specific strategy

[baudib]

I was thinking about this and wondering how you guys incorporate timing tells.

I can recall several key occasions where I open with a marginal hand, thinking I'll fold to a shove, and someone with a 20 BB stack in the blinds tanks before shoving or 3-betting. It's sort of like they're debating whether or not to make their stand with this hand, and are trying to figure out how to look as strong as possible. Then I may decide to 4-bet shove over them with like KT and they will have a tiny pocket pair or something like QJs.