Quote Originally Posted by jasonv12 View Post
You reasoning is good, but I'm not sure this wins in the long run. Here's the problem: you're opening yourself up to a lot of luck, by which I mean you will have to get lucky in order to come back from a short stack. Whereas by open shoving you will need to get lucky if called BUT you also have the added equity of when everyone folds and that right there can get you back in the game with 0 risk whatsoever. And with 5-10bbs, losing one pot, even for a limp can be enough for you to lose all your remaining fold equity.

You really need to balance a)equity when called and b)likelihood of being called and when a shove feels profitable, just go with it when you're this short.

Shoving is unexploitable.
This is the basic strategy I follow, but I will still shove in the 5-10bb range depending on the situation. Really strong hands ep and good but not great hands when I'm in late position are both times I will shove. I also feel that since the "correct" play is to start shoving at 10bb, more players are likely to call a wider range against this typical play. When I follow my own strategy I become harder to read. I actually believe that more people fold to my shove at 5x then the "book" player who shoves at 10bb because they have already made the assumption that I am a nit that will let myself be blinded out waiting for a premium hand, thus I must have a premium hand.

I am going to have to get this some thought though. I watch a lot of people get knocked out shoving with 8-10 bb, but if they double they have a better chance of making a deeper run than I would waiting to shove.

As far as losing all my fold equity to a limped pot, I typically only limp in unraised or min raised pots and after that I'm either shoving or folding to a raise. I won't be calling and chasing anything down which still gives me flop fold equity and I'll take down a bigger pot at that point.

I think shoving short stacked is very exploitable, but that's just my opinion. If you had a large stack, you would only bet/raise 8-10bb with very strong hands or in very specific situations. If you're shoving short stacked you've opened up your range making it profitable for other players to open up their calling ranges and still be in a +ev spot against the short stack.

One other thing I have to consider though is that my BR is still playing very fast paced tournaments where the levels are putting everyone short stacked fairly quickly. I think my strategy works well for fast tournaments, but when you get to slower tournaments with a much longer blind structure it must take more bbs to have some fold equity. There is a huge difference in how these tournaments play out. If the avg stack is only 15-20bb, you still have fold equity at 5bb since that is 1/3-1/4 of most players stacks.

I'm kinda rambling here, but I hope I've explained my logic ok.