Deano's Big Stack

The overly aggressive style of using a large chip stack to bully the small stacks is a time honoured tradition of poker. At our table I think we would all agree Dean does it best. However in spite of going into the after 9:00 game with huge stacks of chips somehow it seems to falter. This leads to three questions; Why does it work? How do you defend against it? Why does it stop working?

When Dean starts on one of his rampages it usually begins with 3000-4000 raises on cards with even the remotest of chances. Cards as bad as 8,3 suited get played because it really isn’t about the cards. He basically is daring you to play for 10% (let’s say of 30,000) of your worth versus 2% of his (stack of 150,000). He bets this on the first round to reduce the number of opponents to we shall say 2. He then follows up after the flop with another monster raise 5000+. Each of the 2 opponents has a 30% chance of hitting the flop and this gives Dean a 40%(aprox) chance they will both fold against his bet just because there is no fit. If they hit the flop they have the other problem, there is a 30% Dean hit as well and a 50/50 chance he hit better. At this point any player left who connected with 2^nd pair. a straight or flush draw folds as well. Dean is very effective at using pot odds to push players on a draw out. We will tackle pot odds next week but suffice to say Dean has a strong instinctive grasp of odds as most businessmen do. Calling in this situation with those draws if he has made a sufficient raise is foolish.

How do you combat this? Don’t attempt the same play style. One problem with competitive men is the desire to push back when pushed. If Mike Tyson walks by and gives Pee Wee Herman a shove, he doesn’t push back and when you have 30k to his 150k you’re Pee Wee. The big stack can go all in with you and still have over 100k and that’s the problem, he has no fear. Play tight, don’t give him any free chips, forget about mediocre cards, stick with premium hands, high pairs, AK to A10, don’t play suited connectors if you have a small stack. When you get a strong hand re-raise the bully 3x his bet before the flop and see just how much he likes his cards. It’s very unlikely he will have a better hand at this point. If he calls, you are in the driver seat now. At the very least you are going into the hand with better cards and a nice pot. Consider going all in if you miss the flop but you are sure he did as well, this uses his tactics against him. A good example would be the following A,K with a 2,3,7 flop. What could he have called your 9k raise with? Other than a pair of 7s the pot should be yours. Don’t try to compete with his big bets, be a sniper when the odds are with you.

Why does this strategy stop working after 9:00pm? The secret is in the definition of the “Big Stack”. A Big Stack really is about how many big blinds you have. As our blinds increase two things happen ; first our bullying friend dean now only has 20+ big blinds not 50, second the big blind and the small blind can end up pot committed because of the chips they have been forced to play. If you are short stacked at 30,000 and you are the big blind at 8000 you have to put the rest of your chips in a lot of situations. You can’t be bullied off, and Dean at the same time needs to risk far too many chips to push you. At this point going all in with small stacks against a raise by Dean can force him off his hand. If you watch these scenarios play out at our table you will see this pattern again and again.

Next week we will talk about Pot Odds.

See you next Tuesday!