For sure all of you at least one time hear the next question:
How short a stack can you play before it’s not lucrative anymore? At some point the blinds eat you away so quickly that it is impossible for you to wait for a good hand anymore, is’t it?
This question is based on a wrong supposition that we are going to discuss in this article. It is true that there are some stacks are too short to play lucratively, but the offender isn’t the blinds. It’s the rake. The house which depends on the rake frame, is taking too large a percentage out of each pot for you to benefit with some short stack sizes.
But say you’re spending time instead of a rake, and the expense is comparatively small if compare to the game size. (If you don’t know, live cardrooms in most cases charge a flat fee of, for example, 7 dollars per half an hour in place of taking a rake.) Now you have a possibility to play any stack size profitably, starting from 1BB and up. The blinds are never so large that they can “eat you alive.”
The clearest reason why for your stack can be so short the blinds “eat you alive” is the table stakes rule. In case when you have a 10BB stack, then as far as you’re concerned your adversaries all have 10BB stacks as well. It is possible to apply this rule to everyone. In case when poker is “0” sum (as it often happens in a time game where the charge is very small in comparison with the stakes), if the same rules can be applied to everyone then no one can be intrinsically unprofitable. If I’m bound to lose money because I’m playing a 10BB stack, then who am I losing it to? The gambler across the table who is also playing efficaciously a 10BB stack whenever he’s in a pot with me? But if we’re both playing perfectly the equal stack size, then how it is possible that only one of us have an advantage? There is no sense to play in such a way.
No stack size is intrinsically unprofitable. It all depends on the strategy you use.
The reason the “blinds will eat you alive” mindset is not difficult to buy into is that we often suppose that short stack gamblers must always play very smartly. Eventually, when you play a 10BB stack you’re for sure will see a lot of showdowns. And if you’re bound for showdown, you would better have the goods, wouldn’t you ?