Deep Stack Discomfort
Why don’t your skills seem to translate when stacks get deep?
Why does it feel like you always get in tough spots?
Why do you lose so much money with your big hands?
Deep stack play can be intimidating, scary, and confusing.
But it can also be fun, easy, and extremely profitable.
Why it Feels So Challenging
You’re not going to like this answer, but it’s the truth:
Deep stack play feels complicated because it is more complicated.
If you’re a cash game player used to playing 100bb poker, think of how much simpler the game is at 8bb.
To someone who only played 8bb poker, 100bb poker would be intimidating, scary, and confusing.
Why? Two reasons:
They’re not used to it
They haven’t built up the skills to deal with the complexity of the game
You’re not comfortable with deep stacks because you’re not used to it, and you don’t yet have the skills to handle it.
It’s not the same game.
You can’t simply treat it like a slight variation of your normal game, where a couple of hot tips will change everything for you (though I’ll share some hot tips anyway!).
A Balancing Act
Riding a bike with training wheels is still riding a bike. You need to pedal, steer, brake, and… almost surely some other things, too (I’m not much of a cyclist!).
But no matter how many hours you’ve ridden with your training wheels on, you’re going to wobble when they come off. Your training wheels let you learn the other necessary bike-riding skills without the need to balance at the same time.
This is how poker works, too.
As you increase the complexity of the game, you need to get better at balance. An unbalanced range won’t hurt you much at 9-handed, 100bb NL Hold’em. But if you want to reduce the number of players, or, as we’re focusing on today, increase the stack sizes, your inability to balance properly is going to hurt you.
Range Issues
Let’s say you’re playing 9-handed $1/$3 NL Hold’em, with $300 in your stack.
Someone in middle position opens to $15 and gets three loose callers. You look down at A♣️A♦️ in the SB.
You make it $75, and only one player calls.
The flop is J♦️8♠️4♦️. There’s $198 in the pot, and you have $225 in your stack.
You can’t screw this up.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a nit who only 3-bets with QQ+ and AKs.
It doesn’t matter if you don’t know what Minimum Defense Frequency means.
It doesn’t matter if you can’t hand read.
You’re playing in a loose game against weak competition. You understand the poker basics. You can just play tight and find an edge.
Now, if instead of $225 in stacks there is $1500 in stacks, you’re going to have to play some real poker.
And if you’re up against someone decent, who knows how tight your 3-betting range is, things might get a little dicey.
They know not to pay you off light if you keep betting, so it’s hard to make more money.
On the T♣️ turn, they know that the best hand you can possibly have is one pair. And they have a lot of ammo to put your one pair to the test.
This is why nitty players without a fully developed game get so uncomfortable when stacks get deep. They don’t often know exactly why, but they find themselves not getting paid off as much, and they end up getting “coolered” for a lot of money when someone “sucks out” on their Aces.
Things Need to Change
The deeper stacks get, the more important it is to have proper, balanced ranges – ones that can connect with a variety of flops, turns and rivers.
You need to be 3-betting a wider range of hands, not only so that you can hit the T♦️8♠️7♠️ flop, but so that you can miss (have bluffs) on the K♠️8♦️6♥️ flop!
You need to learn to apply pressure with a balanced range including value bets and bluffs across multiple streets.
You need to learn to handle having a mostly capped range on certain boards by understanding how much of that range you need to defend in theory as you face multiple barrels.
In short: You need to get better at poker.
There’s no shame in not being better already.
There was no need to learn balance while the training wheels were on. You focused on more important things. But if you want to know how to succeed with deeper stacks, you need a deeper understanding of the game.
The problem isn’t that you need to learn new tricks!
It’s that your old tricks – nitty preflop, barely bluffing, betting big with your value hands, folding when the board gets scary – won’t work so well anymore.
All-Out
When stacks were shorter, you could get all-in preflop, on the flop, or on the turn, when you had a good hand.
If you 3-bet AA like above and they outflop you, oh well! They’re only going to outflop you one in nine times or so. If they do, they get the last $225 in your stack. If they don’t, you get all-in ahead, or you take down the $198 already in the pot.
They can’t make up for all the times they lose, and they can’t bluff you off of your hand.
The same thing is true when you check-raise your flopped set in a single-raised pot with a range that doesn’t contain enough flush draws or gutshots. Without much left to play for, your unbalanced raising range can’t be punished too badly. (I would still punish you by folding top pair on the flop!)
All those times you could get all-in before the hand became too difficult…
Those were your training wheels.
Time to Find Your Balance
So, how do you actually improve at poker?
You’re here, so that’s a great step! Check out the resources below to continue learning, and come back next week, where I’ll share some of those practical tips for adjusting to deep stack poker.
I’ve talked in prior posts about how investing in your growth is critical, but there’s more to it than just that. You also need to take the training wheels off, fall down, and skin your knee a few times. (Sorry – there are no knee pads on the poker side of this metaphor!)
It’s my opinion that playing without learning is silly, and learning without playing is wasteful.
Consume knowledge, and then put it into practice. Allow that practice to get you curious to consume more knowledge. Now put that into your game and see how it goes. Leverage this cycle of education and execution, which makes the motivation come much more naturally.
One of the things that makes poker so beautiful as a potential career is that you get rewarded (on average) for how well you play. You don’t need to have an impressive PHD, have 8 years of experience, and suck up to the right people to get a raise and promotion.
All you have to do is play better.
