JV'S KILLER POKER:
DEATH BY SHORT BUY-IN

BY: John Vorhaus

I'm playing $10-20 hold'em when a new player enters the game. I've never seen him before, yet there's something about him that tells me he's a loser, a mark, a target of opportunity. What is that thing?

It's his buy-in. His pitiful, puny, short buy-in.

He's bought in to this $10-20 game for the princely sum of $200, two stacks of $5 chips.

Does this mean he's so confident two stacks'll do the job that he doesn't feel the need to risk more? Ha! To the contrary, it means he's desperate not to lose -- so desperate, in fact, that he has applied the prophylactic measure of the short buy-in in a misguided effort to protect himself from himself. He probably has more money in his pocket, but he thinks that if he doesn't put it into play he won't imperil it.

Whew. You can smell the fear from here.

And as we all know, scared poker is loser poker. If you have someone in your game who's so scared as to buy in short, he will not play correctly. He'll fold when he should call and call when he should raise. To strong, savvy, fearless players he'll be a delicious victim; a sitting, as it were, duck.

What this reminds me of is the kid in elementary school who unknowingly got a kick-me sign taped to his back and wore it around all day. Only difference is, here the player is taping the kick-me sign to his own back. And what do we do with such a player? We attack him. Attack without mercy. Start from the moment he sits down and never let up. Because even if this player gets a little lucky and gets a little bit ahead, he's already identified himself as someone whose poker thinking is just plain flawed. He's not focused on winning, he's focused on not losing. It's only a matter of time before he pees away his short buy-in and gets down to the money in his pants, the money he thought he had protected so well.

Short money is doomed money. Doomed! Don't ever be the one who buys in short. If you're genuinely under-capitalized for a given game, then you have no business being in that game in the first place. Drop down a limit. Keep dropping down till the amount of money you put in play is adequate to the task at hand. O

kay, then, Mr. Smartypants Killer Poker Guy, what buy-in is adequate to the task at hand? In most cardrooms and casinos the typical buy-in is one rack of whatever denomination chip is in play. This would be $200 in a $2-chip game, $500 in a $5-chip game and so on. Gimme a rack, they say. A rack is convenient.

But we're not here for convenience. We're here to crush. While you never want to buy in for less than the typical table stack, you might want to buy in for lots more. If everyone else buys in for one rack, you buy in for two. No this will not make you a reckless, careless, out-of-control maniac. Rather, it will make you a force to be reckoned with. It'll send a message to the rest of the table that you came to play this game -- to play it correctly -- and you are strong enough and fearless enough to invest twice as much money as everyone else.

And for those who arrive after you, it'll send the message that you are a winner. Well, in their eyes you have to be, for they'll assume that you bought in for one rack, just like everybody does, and that, by luck or strong play, you've turned that one rack into two. Good for you!

How bad is the short buy-in? Consider this scenario. A guy buys in to a $6-12 game for $60. On his first hand he picks up pocket aces. He knows he should raise to isolate, but he's afraid to commit too much money to the pot, in case the hand doesn't go his way. From the outset he's playing defensively. Or maybe he's thinking he can get a big parlay out of his small stack by taking his aces into a five- or six-way field. In any case, he lets a lot of small holdings limp into the pot, and while he's a favorite over each of them, he's an underdog to all of them. A couple of bets, a couple of raises... lo and behold, he gets all-in on the very first hand. When he loses (which he does 'cause he let the limpers limp) he finds himself back on his heels: sad, steaming, and buying more chips before his seat is even warm.

The damage is two-fold: his short buy-in has inspired his foes because he looks like a loser; that same short buy-in has pushed him off his game because he feels like a loser too. Goodness, what a mess. Don't let it happen to you. Just not ever. If you can't buy in for a decent amount, don't buy in at all. The short buy-in simply says you're afraid, and you never want to say you're afraid.

Hell, you might as well be wearing a kick-me sign.

(John Vorhaus is author of the KILLER POKER series and News Ambassador for UltimateBet.com.)