Avoid the Stack Sandwich

Lee Jones · October 8, 2010

A million years ago, Mike Caro pointed out that money flows clockwise around a poker table. This should be self-evident to any thinking poker player. If position is everything we say it is, then each player will win money from his right-hand neighbor and lose money to his left-hand neighbor. And so it goes around. Obviously, this ignores the not-insignificant effect of “difference in ability,” but position is truly a powerful equalizer.

Now, imagine a heads-up poker game in which you always have the button; you would be a heavy favorite against any but absolute world-class opposition and perhaps even then. Well, in a regular ring game, you have position against your immediate right-hand neighbor (N-1)/N of the hands dealt, where “N” is the number of players at the table. In short, you and he are playing a little private game in which you almost always have the button.

This is not news to anybody, but I want to restate the obvious in preparation for the following…

Given that you are in a couple of ill-balanced private HU games with your immediate neighbors, the relative stack sizes of those private games matter a lot, particularly in a game such as PLO, where position is virtually everything. This effect is exacerbated when the stacks become extremely deep. For the purposes of this discussion, we’ll consider a “typical” online PLO game with 100 big blinds as our yardstick and say that 200 big blinds is extremely deep. Note that this is not an arbitrary value; when the stacks get that big, there is now enough money for a big bet on the river after a full pot three-bet pre-flop and pot-sized bets on both the flop and turn.

Thus with stacks that deep, you may have to play poker for three streets of post-flop betting. One of the problems with PLO is that hands that looked huge on the flop and the turn suddenly drop way down the “Nut hit parade” with a lot of river cards. For instance, suppose you’re playing $1-2 PLO and have JJT9 double-suited. You open-raise to $7 (the maximum) and an aggressive player behind you (heck, let’s say he’s your immediate left-hand neighbor) makes it three bets to $24. Everybody else folds and you call.

The flop comes Jd-7s-6d. Your cards are all black (or black and green, whatever). Afraid of giving a free card, you bet $50; he calls. There’s $151 in the pot. The turn is a blessed 2c. You bet $130 and he calls. Now, this is where it gets interesting. Suppose you had both started with 100 big blinds ($200). Well, you couldn’t have even bet $130 on the turn – you’d be all in for $126. And that’s a great result; you’ve gotten all your money in looking at the nuts. Roll the river card out and see who wins.

But now, suppose you and your opponent each have $400 (200 big blinds). As stipulated, you bet $130 and he called. Now there’s $411 in the pot and you each have almost $200 behind. The river is the 4d. Or the 4c. Or the Ad. Or the 9s. Confused and a bit nervous, you check. Your opponent moves all-in for $196. Don’t you wish the betting had ended one street earlier?

This is where the problem of balance comes in.

Suppose that the previous scenario happens twice: once with you holding the set of jacks against your left-hand neighbor and once with you holding some unstated draw when your right-hand neighbor has the set. Well, if all three of you have $400 each, then the problems are essentially isomorphic (a fancy mathematical term simply meeting that they have the same structure). You have a miserable decision on your hands when the scare card comes and you’re holding a set; your right-hand opponent has the same quandary when the scare card comes and you’re on his left with an unknown hand.

But suppose that your left-hand neighbor has $400, you have $400, but your right-hand neighbor has only $100. Now things are very bad for you. When the situation comes up against your left-hand neighbor, you have to make a very scary decision about a half-pot bet on the river. Your right-hand neighbor, however, has no such scary decision to make. He got himself all-in for $26 on the turn and is done guessing.

The moral of this story: don’t let yourself get into a situation where the stacks are deep but you can lose a great deal more to your left-hand neighbor than you can win from your right-hand neighbor. If such a scenario develops, head for the exit.

An important point: the advantage against you of the player on your left is not as great as your disadvantage to him. Some of the lost equity is distributed around the table to other players. Specifically, the left-hand player can three-bet more liberally because the stacks are deep and he can take advantage of the high stack/pot ratios to pressure the out-of-position player. However, if he overdoes that, it won’t be long before some third player (sitting on 100 big blinds) wakes up with AAxx and drops a hand-crushing preflop four-bet on the party.

Bottom line: when you are in one of these stack sandwiches with the deeper money on your left:

– You can lose more money in heads-up pots when you are out of position than you can win when you have position.

– Positional advantage is greater the deeper the money is. Again, that’s just because there’s more poker to play and the more poker you play the more position matters.

These two effects combine multiplicatively: you’re giving up a larger percentage edge to your left-hand opponent multiplied by more money at stake.

In closing, I need to say that the basic idea for this article and the theory behind it all comes from my friend StellarWind. He just mentioned this to me en passant in an email but I think it’s a crucial concept that many people don’t get.

*Opinions expressed in this article and all member-submitted content belong solely to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of PocketFives.

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Lee Jonesis the cardroom manager of Cake Pokerand has been in the online poker business for over six years. He is also the author of Winning Low Limit Hold’em, which has been in publication for over 15 years.

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