The Short Stack Strategy

Online poker players seems to become more and more loose and aggressive. If they are weak its fine for you. You will take their money in the long run, even if they will give you a high standard deviation. On their lucky days they can win really big from you but most of the time they will loose their money.
But there is also a lot of relatively strong loose aggressive players out there now days especially in the 6 seated tables I prefer to play.
And it can be very frustrating for a tight aggressive player to play against this player type.
They raise pre almost  every hand and you fold and fold again. Until you get a big pair. You raise big pre flop, 2 callers. Flop comes  J-9-2 rainbow. Of course you bet the flop big, 1 caller. A 5 on turn and you have to bet strong here too. But now you are re raised  all-in. Since you know the raiser is bluffing and semi bluffing frequency  you  have to call and he win with his J-9. This is not good.  Even if your preflop raise where relatively big your opponent ends up winning a pot big enough to justify his loose preflop call.
So what can you do to fight back against this kinds of opponents?
You can bet much bigger preflop with your good cards . Then you are not giving the necessary odds for loose calls, but it can also result in that your opponents just fold those pots and you  ends up winning only the blinds with your AA.
You will beat them if you can get a good read on them and fold when they have you beat. But this kind of players can call with almost any two cards and its nearly impossible to get a read on them. And if you fold too often to their big raises they will run you over with bluffs.
But there is one very good strategy against the loose aggressive players  which will make you beat them big in the long run and in addition gives you a very low standard deviation.
The Short Stack Strategy
If you consequently play with a short stack against loose and loose aggressive players and  correctly adjusts to short stack play, a lot of things change and most of them to your advantage.
The typical buy in in no limit Holdem are 100 times the BB. And almost all good players buy in for the maximum amount. But is this the best stack size?  Maybe it is if you are superior your opponents in every way, but most of the time you are not.
Against loose aggressive opponents a stack size of 25-35 times the BB gives you a big advantage.
If you are in a NL1-2 game with a stack of 60 you still raise to 12 preflop with a good hand. Now you are only offering implied odds of 4:1 for your opponents and it can never be correct to call with hands like J-9. But they will still call you. Even if its wrong to call because of your small stack your opponents will almost never adjust to this.
With a raise and a call in front of you can go all in with hands like A-K, A-Q and 99. To do so with a big stack is suicide, when you are called they probably have AA or KK,  but with this stack size it becomes correct.
And if you have a raise in front of you when you have a big pair its just to go all in. And they will call you with all sorts of hands. They feel like they can take a chance with this limited amount and call your short all in.
A big advantage is that your opponents if they don’t know you will probably underestimate your game, most short stacked players are weak.
Your opponents will also have much harder to bluff you. Your odds for calling will almost always be very good and you don’t risk much by calling.
There are of course some downsides too. You cant bluff your opponents often. Your stack are too small to scare anybody. You will be called often so you always need a decent hand when you are in a pot.
You cant call raised pots with some types of hands like small pairs and suited connectors, you can only play medium and big pairs and big cards.
When you double up your stack is not that short anymore so you have to adjust your strategy, or you can leave the table and start with a small stack on another table.
 

Deep stack strategy against loose aggressive players.
 

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