Cash Game cash game-half the biggest stack rule (1 Viewer)

saskbull

Two Pair
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Hello all, i’m getting my cash game back into full swing and have had some complaints about some new rules. we play .25-50 (.50-.50 now) with a min $40 max $100. i used to allow any amount any time, but had some wild games that played like 1-2 or even 2-5, so that’s not changing. but i had several players complain about only being able to rebuy for half the biggest stack. within a half hour maniac #1 was running hot and had run over maniac #2 a few times . #1 was sitting with $550-600
“how am i supposed to get my money back?” was maniac #2’s question. i was on the tourney table heads up, and annoyed, but i realized i had no explanation other than reading it here several times and that my assumption is that it’s unfair to have someone come in late and put a player who’s been building all night at risk? are there other reasons?
 
I'm a fan of having a set maximum, no matter stack sizes. When I host a game, I often get the question, "How much should I bring?" While I always give the disclaimer that wins /losses depend on the player, I also tend to suggest 3 full buy-ins as a benchmark. I don't like the idea that a person may be planning on $100 buy-ins, only to arrive and see hundreds in front of everybody at the table.

Similarly, I like to have a good feeling for what sort of money is being played for, and that's just not possible with a floating max buy-in.

Roberts rules of poker does have a rule that stakes can change if all but one (or all) players agree. My personal house rule is that stakes will only change if all players agree.
 
In my last year or two of hosting I switched from a fixed cap to a half the big stack rule. Although most never excerised that option lots of people liked being able to add on an extra hundred or so when stacks got deeper later and that rule allowed for that. Most players seemed to like it so I kept it. Basically having a half the big stack rule protects the big stack from losing it all in one hand to someone who "bought" the stack.
 
Tell the whining player that the big stack won the money $100 at a time! So obviously it can be done. And I always like to drop the “play bettter” line on them at that point! :ROFL: :ROFLMAO:

Though I do like a larger rebuy amount option for players that have been playing all night and the game is playing bigger now. I don’t let a late player buy in for more than the initial buy in amount to start. Only a few people ever use the larger rebuy option. Myself being one of them.
 
yes i should have clarified that i use 40-80/OR half biggest stack. apperantly nobody had heard of this before and figured they should be able to buy the biggest stack or more if they want. i explained that if we are going to buy in for say 500, there’s no point in playing .50-.50 anymore
 
Tell the whining player that the big stack won the money $100 at a time! So obviously it can be done. And I always like to drop the “play bettter” line on them at that point! :ROFL: :ROFLMAO:
that’s what i said lol..he didn’t find it funny haha
 
i had several players complain about only being able to rebuy for half the biggest stack
“how am i supposed to get my money back?”

You only need to buy in for 100 bb and play well to get your money back, over time.

Some people think poker is 90% stack-bullying, and 10% everything else. They are wrong, but they are stubborn.

Two of them, if wealthy enough to keep rebuying, will ruin the table for everyone else. That's the real reason for buy-in limits - it's not really to keep an idiot from buying in with money they can't afford - it's to keep a couple people with deep pockets from ruining the game play for everyone else.
 
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+1 for the 1/2 the big stack rule - it's how I do it, but it's an 'eye-ball' of the big stack.

Example - How much can I buy in for? (looks over at big stack) about $300. Not going to waste the time to count, close enough is good enough for me.
 
½ big stack is the safest way to go to keep the most people happy. If #2 can’t win his money back with buying in for half of #1 only 30min into the cash game, that’s on him not the rules.

It’s your game and your stakes... unless you’re going to lose all your players I’d say keep it as you want and remind #2 to say “thank you for hosting saskbull!” :)
 
thanks guys, i agree with this, was just unsure if my explanation of why to the guy was legit. i’ll have to check out roberts rules of poker for other tidbits. i want to run a good game that people will want to come to.
 
First, if your .50/.50 game looks like a $1/$2 table you should increase the max buy-in to 300BB's.

The reasoning behind the half stack rule is a double up through the big stack would reverse the stack sizes of the two players. In other words, the half stack rule gives Player 2 the opportunity to win a stack equal to Player 1 (the big stack).
 
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First, if your .50/.50 game looks like a $1/$2 table you should increase the max buy-in to 300BB's.

that’s the fine line i’m running, i’m a 1-2-5 player. i also like to play for quarters...or toothpicks.. and get my chips into play lol. the main crew is there to play .50-.50 with $80-100/half of stack max, because that’s their comfort level . it usually plays as it should at .50-.50, just had a few new players (maniacs, uber lags from the 1-2-5 game) who did not like the rule (or maybe my explanation). but i’d like to keep them around ;)

i’m thinking of getting a basic house rules poster.. and this one right beside it
C9471CDC-0659-4A37-B4E9-442C1656D7DD.jpeg
 
For both my tourney and cash game, as a host I tend to want to structure the game to discourage BINGO play by a minority of players with much deeper pockets than the rest.

In my experience, bankroll bullying does make life a lot harder for the host because it often leads to the pool of players shrinking down to just the richest or most reckless. (It also IMHO makes for a pretty uninteresting game of poker, even if it can be profitable for those prepared to deal with ultra-LAGs.)

So: There are no rebuys in our tourneys, though lately there has been some talk of reinstating a previous host’s policy of “first player out at each table can rebuy” (insurance against someone who traveled a half-hour to the game running into a bad beat early). But even that can be abused if someone with a bigger roll decides to waste the first bust-out via BINGO play. I’m more in favor of a partial rebuy, for less than the initial starting stack, as a deterrent against that.

The cash game usually starts at 1/2 as long as it’s short-handed, with people buying in light for just $100-$200 to pass the time while waiting for others to bust from the earlier tourney. Once the table gets to 6+ players, we typically bump up to 2/5. But still most don’t buy in for more than $300-$400 at a time.

And even once there is some big money accumulating on the table, it’s pretty rare for anyone to want to buy back in for more than $500 at a clip. I don’t know that I’ve seen anyone buy in for more than a total of 300BB over the course of an evening.

The underlying guideline is no more than half the biggest stack. I could even see an argument for a 100BB-or-1/3rd rule, because the buy-back size affects not just the big stack, but everyone else at the table, too.
 
For my $0.50-$0.50 cash game with $100 buy-in I used to do max rebuy/add-on up to $100. I recently changed to rebuys to up to half of big stack. It's made the game play a bit larger but my guys already do straddles to $1-$2-$4-$8-$16-$32 type of stuff anyway. I'm always fine with more money on the table ;)
 
You can always just do a min max so everyone is clear
1/2 is $50 min $200 max at the casino I play at but most other places is $50 min $300 max and few of those places allow you to buy in for the biggest stack which most don’t but it a good option imo
 
I’ve been playing a smaller game with some work guys 25/50 cent everyone 1st buy in is $20 once they loose it’s another $20 rebuy loose again then it’s $100 lol the game plays bigger and I suggested raising blinds to 50/$1 and the same action players are against it
 
In my last year or two of hosting I switched from a fixed cap to a half the big stack rule. Although most never excerised that option lots of people liked being able to add on an extra hundred or so when stacks got deeper later and that rule allowed for that. Most players seemed to like it so I kept it. Basically having a half the big stack rule protects the big stack from losing it all in one hand to someone who "bought" the stack.

I was going to post the exact same thing. I like the "half the deep stack" rule. I think three of us actually take advantage of it out of all my players. @ChaosRock @Marc Hedrick and I. Most guys just rebuy for the initial cap of 100 bucks.
 
I rarely take advantage of the half the deep stack rule, however I like it being there. If certain players get a huge stack early, it's nice to be able to compete.
 
I rarely take advantage of the half the deep stack rule, however I like it being there. If certain players get a huge stack early, it's nice to be able to compete.

Haven't you done it a couple of times? That's more than most of the players.
 
I haven’t had much experience with this but I actually like the 1/2 stack rule. IMO it still allows the player rebuying a fair opportunity to make a move at other stacks in the game and recoup what he/she has lost, while also maintaining the stack advantage of the player with the larger stack. Question: Can any player add up to the 1/2 stack rule at any time or only when they bust and have to rebuy?
 
I haven’t had much experience with this but I actually like the 1/2 stack rule. IMO it still allows the player rebuying a fair opportunity to make a move at other stacks in the game and recoup what he/she has lost, while also maintaining the stack advantage of the player with the larger stack. Question: Can any player add up to the 1/2 stack rule at any time or only when they bust and have to rebuy?

I always did the former. Why make someone bust to add more money to their stack as its not a tournament?
 
Honestly I think you should be able to buy up to the biggest stack. It leads to good action.
 
as others have posted ... Half the big stack is still 250-300 not sure why player #2 is unhappy.

And its only player #1 that has the BIG stack.

If player #2 is allowed to buy in for $600 that puts the other players at a disadvantage too.

The concept i believe is so it escalates fairly. Not nice to feel we all have "about" same stacks which definitely influences betting etc.
to have daddy big stacks come in and buy in for 600 while everyone else is on 120 -150.

Sounds like #2 is upset he can't bully the table around with a big stack so he's trying to buy the stack rather than earn it.
 
How you do your buy-in rules depends on what how you want it to affect the game.

Stick with a strict max, and you'll be catering to your lower-stakes players. Keep the half-the-big-stack rule, and you'll eventually drive those players out, leaving just your more maniacal players and people from $1/2/5.

Make no mistake about that, BTW: If your game is a mix of higher- and lower-stakes guys, you will gradually lose your lower-stakes people, especially the donators. Nothing wrong with that, if that's the direction you want to head, but be aware that you won't have a $0.50/0.50 game anymore after a while.

If you want to cater to both types of players, perhaps you could run a different game on different occasions, one with a fixed max for the lower-stakes players, and the other with half-the-big-stack.

Anyway, it's just my experience that half-the-big-stack can lead to extraordinarily large games. All it takes is one maniac with deep pockets or someone playing below his usual stakes, never mind what happens when two or more of those players are present. If that's what you want, go for it, but it takes a certain kind of lineup for it to go well, and you're likely to have higher turnover than a game with a smaller range of buy-ins.
 
How you do your buy-in rules depends on what how you want it to affect the game.

Stick with a strict max, and you'll be catering to your lower-stakes players. Keep the half-the-big-stack rule, and you'll eventually drive those players out, leaving just your more maniacal players and people from $1/2/5.

Make no mistake about that, BTW: If your game is a mix of higher- and lower-stakes guys, you will gradually lose your lower-stakes people, especially the donators. Nothing wrong with that, if that's the direction you want to head, but be aware that you won't have a $0.50/0.50 game anymore after a while.

If you want to cater to both types of players, perhaps you could run a different game on different occasions, one with a fixed max for the lower-stakes players, and the other with half-the-big-stack.

Anyway, it's just my experience that half-the-big-stack can lead to extraordinarily large games. All it takes is one maniac with deep pockets or someone playing below his usual stakes, never mind what happens when two or more of those players are present. If that's what you want, go for it, but it takes a certain kind of lineup for it to go well, and you're likely to have higher turnover than a game with a smaller range of buy-ins.
I'm thinking about eventually organizing a game. These are all valid points to consider. Thanks for the perspective!
 
....allows the player rebuying a fair opportunity to make a move at other stacks in the game and recoup what he/she has lost....

But that player has done absolutely nothing to earn that opportunity.

In my home games, the max buy-in is the max re-buy. Doing otherwise kills the original stakes of the game.
 
How you do your buy-in rules depends on what how you want it to affect the game.

Stick with a strict max, and you'll be catering to your lower-stakes players. Keep the half-the-big-stack rule, and you'll eventually drive those players out, leaving just your more maniacal players and people from $1/2/5.

Make no mistake about that, BTW: If your game is a mix of higher- and lower-stakes guys, you will gradually lose your lower-stakes people, especially the donators. Nothing wrong with that, if that's the direction you want to head, but be aware that you won't have a $0.50/0.50 game anymore after a while.

If you want to cater to both types of players, perhaps you could run a different game on different occasions, one with a fixed max for the lower-stakes players, and the other with half-the-big-stack.

Anyway, it's just my experience that half-the-big-stack can lead to extraordinarily large games. All it takes is one maniac with deep pockets or someone playing below his usual stakes, never mind what happens when two or more of those players are present. If that's what you want, go for it, but it takes a certain kind of lineup for it to go well, and you're likely to have higher turnover than a game with a smaller range of buy-ins.
I think you hit the nail on the head. The bulk of the games I've hosted have been with friends and coworkers, all of which are not comfortable with stakes higher than 25¢/50¢. It makes sense then why I've never been a fan of the half-stack rule, as this would likely drive my player base away.
 

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