How Much to Sit With

[KingBorgo]

When sitting at a cash game, you have the option of choosing how much money you want to sit at the table with. This differs strongly from tournaments, where you pay a set amount, and everybody receives the exact same amount of chips. There is no immediate big stack, and no immediate short stack. Everybody is on the same playing field, jockeying for the same prize: 1st place.

A cash game is much different. While everyone sitting at the table is playing to win, they are going about it different ways. Since the blinds never escalate, some take a tighter approach, and wait on good hands, and try to get maximum value out of them. Others take a more aggressive approach, trying to bully the table and make their profits through numerous pots won. Players can vary anywhere in between, and are not stuck in this role.

One thing you must immediately consider when you go to play a cash game is which of these strategies you will prefer to play, if you want to be the table captain, winning up to 20% of the pots, or the quiet player, working only to take few pots with your better hands. As you get an idea of how you want to play, you need to decide how much you want to sit at the table with. On average, you can sit at a no limit table with a maximum of one hundred times the big blinds ($200 in a $1/2 NL game, $500 in a $2/5, etc) and a minimum of twenty times ($40 in $1/2 NL, etc). The amount you sit with will immediately affect how you play, and how others play against you.

Personally, I prefer to sit with as many chips as possible. I love deepstack tables. I want to make as much possible profit off of a big hand as I can. I want to be able to play my drawing hands, to call a bet with my wired 5-6 suited. If I have a big stack in front of me, the implied odds are so much larger for these hands that it becomes much more profitable to play them. Some other big stack, holding his pocket aces, has a much larger shot at losing his stack to me when I flop the nut straight and bust him for a massive pot.

The converse of this is also true then. Sitting in with the minimum can be a profitable play as well. While you will not be playing your wired 5-6, your aces become much more valuable, because that 5-6 will no longer be priced in to call. Also, your stack will be small enough that a big stack may play his K-T or so to a K high flop against your A-K, because his variance is much lower, and he will not risk as much with what he knows is a mediocre hand.

While sitting at these opposite ends of the spectrum are profitable, I highly recommend staying away from somewhere in the middle. There is simply no value to it. What is the point of sitting in with 80 BBs when you are playing in the style that you will win more with more chips in front of you? Why sit in with 40 BBs when neither gives you enough chips to be aggressive, nor does it allow opponents to play mediocre hands while still avoiding draws. In essence, when you go to sit at the cash game, it is go big, stay small, or get the hell out.

[Bailyen]

Borgo already knows my strategy since we have already discussed this, but for those of you that don't I prefer to sit with the bare minimum. Here's why:

1) Sitting at the bare minimum allows me to focus more or be more disciplined. I'm waiting for that AA or KK that Borgo described so that I can easily double up. I can't play that 5-6 that was mentioned earlier because it's too big of a gamble, and I certaintly don't like to throw money away.

2) Because I'm only playing certain hands, it allows me to observe the other players at the table and possibly spot potential tells, behaviors, betting patterns etc.

This just works for me. I tried sitting with the max amount that was already mentioned and I find myself playing hands I know I shouldn't. This works for me so if you have some trouble staying focused with a maxed buyin; give this a shot.

[ELF]

Just 1 added note if you decide to sit with a smaller amount. Set your auto re-buy to keep you from falling too short to defend a pot. If it takes a few rounds of antes and maybe you saw a bad flop and folded before you get a hand and a good flop you could find yourself sitting on 30 BB or less on a flop with 12 BB in the pot and with just 1 caller on a draw, you have no way to take away the odds to defend both the turn and the river, and most times an observant player in early position will c-bet the flop on a draw just to give himself the odds to see the river against a short stack. If you sit with 45BB and auto re-buy back to 45BB if you fall below 45 BB, even your antes are immediately replaced. That way you still have that minimal risk when you first sit down, but enough to play a good hand aggressively.