Pokerwiner.com → Within poker principles
3.Consider the impact of stack size.
There is an argument in favor of keeping a large stack of poker chips in front of you. The idea is that this will encourage players to think you are a winner, and will intimidate them so that they don’t take shots at you, or otherwise play as aggressively against you. I believe there is at least a bit of truth to this.
I have actually heard people express the belief that players whom I knew played a very flawed game were big winners simply because they usually had big stacks of chips on the poker table. (Note that you will not form such misperceptions about your opponents once you develop sufficient knowledge of the game to assess their skill purely from observing their play. Without this knowledge, you are vulnerable to being influenced and frequently misled by extraneous information such as stack size. For more see the essay, “An Illusory Winner”). So if you want to minimize other players’ awareness of your downswings, keep a big stack. It is another step to say that this will substantially affect how they play against you. But it may at times produce some of the benefits mentioned above. There may, however, be other effects of stacks size which bear on the issue of game preservation.
For instance, indications that you are a winning player (e.g.,consistently keeping a large stack) may keep weaker players away. That is, if they are intimidated by you they may not want to play in your game. I see this frequently. An average player looks at a game with a seat open, considers the lineup, and passes on the game. I am not sure that his concern is always about having to play against winning players. In some instances such a player probably sees the game as too “tight, ” a quality which he may or may not correlate with winning players. Clearly though, some players do make this connection. Others realize, at least, that in a zero-sum game there must be losers if there are not be winners. So if they see you as a winner, they have to conclude that you do not do much for their chances in that poker game.
Thus, to the degree that you are seen by others as a winner, you are projecting a quality which does not attract them to your game. This line of thinking leads to the conclusion that when you are concerned about game preservation, a small stack (which you can keep, by starting smaller and “coloring up”) might actually be better for your image than a large stack. The small stack may make others less likely to see you as a winner, thus making your game more attractive to them. This is certainly preferable to being seen as a winner, but having a game in which to play. There is another side to this argument. Some contend that there are players who are attracted to a game where they see large stacks. This is because they see what they believe to be an opportunity to take a small stack of their own up against some large stacks and perhaps win a lot of money.
Of course, they fail to realize that a small stack in front of a good player is often like the tip of an iceberg. The professional’s bankroll provides plenty of additional money that he can and will convert into chips should a downswing within a given session necessitate it. Players less educated in poker tend not to think about or even be aware of this. They look only at current stack size, figuring that’s what is available for them to win in the present game. Thus, we have one argument which holds that a small stack is conducive to game preservation, and another which advocates a large stack for the same purpose.
I believe that each has validity. Some players are affected one way, others another, by variations in stack size. The trick, then, would be to identify how specific players are likely to be influenced by variations in your stack size. You must consider, among other things, your image with various players, what they know about you, how long they have played with you, and how sophisticated they are in their thinking about the game. You will then be in a poker position to decide what sort of stack to maintain. That said, I don’t believe that any of these effects of stack size is very strong. If you ignored them completely, it probably wouldn’t matter very much.
(I included this topic just to be thorough. I will admit that I usually just keep a stack size that is big enough to provide some reasonable insurance against the minor inconvenience of having to buy more chips). Still, if you want to do all you can to keep your regular game alive you should probably think about them.
"The Best Player I' ve Ever Seen " / The Hit and Run Follies / An Illusory Winner /
On Randomness, Rushes, Hot Seats, and Bad Luck Dealers / Bad Beat? Think Again
Why Learn to Beat Tougher Games? / Practicing Game Preservation
Short-Handed Play: Don’t Miss out / How I Learned Poker: Part I
How I Learned Poker : Part II