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Ace Speaks - Starting Hand Selection & Stack Size (part I)
by Rolf Slotboom

Introduction

A lot has been written about the influence of the number of chips in front of you on the hands you can and should play. Almost without exception, these writings are about tournament play. After all, it should be clear that in tournaments, those who only look at the quality of their cards when making the decision whether or not to play, and who don't take into account the size of their and their opponents' stacks, will perform significantly worse than the people who do make these adjustments.

But this article that you are reading now is not about tournament play - it is about the relation between stack size and hand selection when it comes to money play. While in the past the majority of the cash games would always be limit, this meant that almost all literature that discussed cash game poker was written from the viewpoint of limit play, and the good big-bet strategies were almost always analyzed from a tournament setting, not cash. But because of the recent growth of big-bet cash games, both in brick and mortar casinos as well as online, it is time to re-evaluate some of this old big-bet tournament literature and to dig into specific cash game strategies for big-bet play. That's what I'll do in this two-part article series. I will discuss a couple of pot-limit Omaha starting hands, and I will try to analyze how the size of your stack can have a major impact on the playability and potential profitability of some of these hands. I will show that some hands should often with big stacks but not with small stacks - and sometimes the other way around as well. Note that the information I provide is not always easy to digest, and to my knowledge not too much has appeared in print about this specific issue before. But if you want to become successful in big-bet cash games, it is absolutely imperative to understand the concepts that I discuss here. In this two-part article, I will analyze three specific starting hands in my favorite game, pot-limit Omaha, and the impact of the stack sizes on the best course of action - not just before the flop, but also later in the hand. It goes without saying that the underlying concepts I will share with you are not just for PLO; they are equally important for other big-bet games like pot- and no-limit hold'em.

Hand No. 1: KK83 rainbow (no suits)

Now, while most people who come from a hold'em background would think this is a premium hand, all good Omaha players know that this actually is a piece of cheese, because it has no suits and is totally uncoordinated - the pair of kings being just about the only value. Having said that, the hand does have some strength, and if you manage to flop a third king then you are usually in a very powerful position - especially when you are in a multiway pot and / or are up against relatively weak opposition.

This means that if you are holding a medium stack (say, between $500 and $800 in a game with $10-10 blinds, or in other words with a stack size of 50-80 times the big blind) and the opposition is not too tough, there is nothing wrong with calling from middle or late position in an unraised pot to see the flop cheaply. After all, you know that if you don't flop a king, you will almost certainly be out, and you will not put a single chip in the pot anymore from then on. But is is worth seeing this flop because if you do hit, you may very well win a big pot - as I said, especially if the pot is multiway and the opposition is rather weak.

But if you are playing a small stack (say anywhere from $150 to $250, or less than 25xBB), then this preflop call may not be so automatic actually. This is especially true if it is probable that the pot gets raised behind you. So, what this means is that with a small stack, holding this KK83 no suits, you might want to call on or near the button in an unraised pot, but not in early or middle position, because if you call now and the pot gets raised behind you, you will probably have to forfeit your bet - a bet that accounts to a fairly high percentage of your stack.* With a medium stack you could have made this call profitably from these early and middle positions, because now if the pot gets raised behind you, this investment you will have lost is a much smaller percentage of your total stack. Remember, in big-bet poker you are always looking for opportunities to double through. Or to be more precise: especially with relatively shallow money you should usually try to play for your entire stack when you decide to get involved. In other words, you should often play for all your money or don't play at all. In cases like this, risking 5% of your stack with a very speculative holding is a definite no-no, especially if there is a reasonable chance that despite this 5% investment you may not even get to see the flop.

What does all of this mean?

Now, what this means is that this exact same hand KK83 should often be folded with a short stack and can often be called with a medium stack - now, then logic says we can almost always play it when holding a big stack, right? Well, not really. Because of the following conditions, playing this hand can sometimes be profitable if you have a medium stack - but actually unprofitable when playing a large stack (say, more than 100xBB).

Some concrete examples of the problems / difficulties for this KK83 in deep-money play

Let's dig into this matter a little deeper, by analyzing the troubles you may face when playing a big stack - even when you have flopped the hand you wanted: top set.

Conclusion

With deep money, this KK83 is usually playable only when you are in position, and when the opposition is fairly weak. You will usually need a hand like KKJ9 single-suited to make a profitable call when your position is not great, because then you would have the possibility to flop top set with redraws, which will allow you to play the hand more strongly. Also, if indeed you flop top set, you may now have at least some blocker cards against the straight draws that your opponents may have. And having just one or two of these cards to block them, may actually make the difference between a profitable draw for your opponents and an unprofitable one. You should take all these factors into account before making the first, seemingly easy, decision to play or not. Knowing in advance the characteristics of a hand with regards to the size of your stack and the potential problems later in the hand, knowing this in advance is absolutely crucial in order to play big-bet poker in a successful manner.

Some final words

In the second part of this article, I will analyze two more hands that can sometimes be played for a profit with certain stack sizes, but not with others. To be more concrete, I will analyze the medium rundown 9876 with no suits, and the rather strange-looking AAAx - a hand that causes quite a few Omaha players many problems.