Look Ma! I’m full stacked!
I have been a student of Nathan “Blackrain79” Williams for about three years, since I first started learning poker. I did not follow Nathan’s strategy exclusively, but instead read a variety of poker advisers, most of them advocating a full-stacked strategy.
I eventually settled on short-stacking as my path to profitable poker. But I had never given the Blackrain79 strategy the kind of experimental tryouts that I gave my own, so I decided to give his strategy a ten buy-in trial and analyze it for my readers. I recorded the ten buy-ins for analysis later. I always record my online play for reasons I explain here:
https://keepcalmrebuy.com/recording-your-online-poker/
Video of the first session can be found here:
Blackrain79’s pre-flop strategy is available on a “cheat sheet” that he offers for free in exchange for your email address. Find it here:
https://www.blackrain79.com/p/free-guide.html
Rules of the challenge
Before I started, I decided on the rules that I would follow. I decided to play ten buy-ins in a row, recording the results and not omitting any sessions, even if they seemed to be flukes. I would follow the pre-flop cheat sheet to the letter, barring the occasional misclick. Postflop, I would follow Blackrain79’s advice as much as possible, imagining how a beginner might play it.
In particular, I would follow his most often repeated pieces of wisdom, such as to avoid fancy play syndrome, to cbet most flops and to be prepared to fold to aggression absent a real hand on the assumption that players at the micros rarely bluff. I would top off to 100BB if I dropped below 90BB. If I was felted, I would keep calm and re-buy and consider that the start of another buy-in.
The Cheat Sheet
The cheat sheet is actually several sheets, most of which are range charts showing which hands to play in what positions. Blackrain79 divides the full-ring and 6nax tables into four parts each: early position, middle position, the cutoff and the button, and provides a separate range chart for each position. He does not explicitly state it, but my assumption is that he considers the big blind and small blind to be part of early position. This is in contrast to my own default strategy in which the blinds are played as late position.
According to Flopzilla, the cheat sheet’s full-ring range for the button is 41.5% of hands, the cutoff range is 28.2%, middle position you would play 16.7% and early position would be 8.9%. If my math is correct, this would give you a VPIP of about 17%. The cheat sheet mentions nothing about calling.
This seems very lose to a nitty short-stacker like myself and the 6max pages are even a little looser.
At 6max, you would also play 41.5% on the button, 28.2%, 16.7% in middle position, and in early position it is 11.9%. So button, cutoff and middle position are the same range as full-ring but in early position you play an extra 3% of hands. This is looser than it sounds because you will be on the button and cutoff more frequently at 6max than at full ring.
These ranges are for a player who is the first raiser.
The instruction on the cheat sheet is to raise 3X plus 1BB for every limper. If in the blinds, he suggests adding an additional BB. If in the cutoff or button with no limpers, you would raise 2.5BB. Williams explains that this is because you are stealing with a very wide range.
The cheat sheet does not explain what to do when there are raiser(s) and caller(s) in front of you. For those situations, I fell back on what I had learned from watching Blackrain79 videos and reading his book Modern Small Stakes.
Modern Small Stakes has range charts for facing a raise pre-flop. They are very detailed as to when you should flat, when you should three bet and when you should fold. The reasoning is sound for these charts. That would be a lot to memorize, but if you were to play the opening/isolating ranges on the cheat sheet with fidelity base your play against raises folloowing the hand charts of Modern Small Stakes, you would have a very solid pre-flop game at 100BB.
The one part of his range charts that I am skeptical of is that they value pocket pairs more than I would. The charts’ guidance is to play all pairs in all position when you are the first raiser and to flat call all pairs in early position and 3bet big pairs (JJ+) and flat medium pairs (TT-) in mid-position. There are only a few very specific spots in which you would fold a pocket pair. For example, in late position against a mid-position raise, you would 3bet 99+, flat 66- and fold 88-77.
I may be misreading that. If so, please let me know and I will make the correction.
Blackrain79’s Post-flop Advice
There is no set of range charts for post-flop play. At 100BB, post-flop play is far too complicated for range charts to cover everything. Those of you who are following The Plan and/or using the Short Stack Default Strategy are used to knowing exactly what the standard play is in every situation pre-and post-flop. That is possible with 30BB because you make most decisions pre-flop and then post-flop it is usually fit-or-fold. So I fell back on all that I learned watching Blackrain79 videos, reading his articles and one of his books.
To condense Williams’ post-flop advice into one sentence: Cbet most flops but be prepared to fold to aggression unless you have a real hand.
In his article on cbetting, Williams recommends a cbet frequency of 70% against a single opponent. He recommends a cbet size of 60%. I probably over-did the cbetting when I ran trials of this strategy. I cbet about 90% of the time, only checking when there was a specific reason such as multiple opponents and a flop of AsKs5s when I had pocket jacks with no spade. I also bet 75% pot because that is an option for a click it bet on Bovada.
This wide cbet range was probably the most effective part of the Blackrain79 strategy. In position, with initiative, I got enough folds by far to make the bluff cbets profitable.
Keep in mind I played mostly at 10NL full-ring, so your results may differ at 5NL or 2NL. In order for a 75% pot bluff cbet to be profitable you need at least 43% folds.
.75/(.75 + 1.00) = .4235
I found that I easily achieved that percentage. The other benefit is that by bluffing frequently, I can convince any watchful player to go along when I am actually cbetting for value.
As I said, your mileage may vary. I would guess that you would get fewer folds playing the fish at 5NL.
Deep Sixed at Six Max
I encourage my readers to start at 10NL, so most of these sessions I played at 10NL. I tried the strategy out at 6max and my results were not so good. However, I only played one two-table session, so my results were in no way definitive.
I believe the reason for this difference is that 6max players – in general – are better than full-ring players, especially when it comes to aggression. I tried to table select for fishy short-stacked players, but there were no fishy tables available at the time I had set aside for the 6max trial. That may be due to Bovada having a smaller player pool than Pokerstars or other American sites.
What I saw over and over on both 6max tables was that my bluff cbets were floated and I was put off my hands when I checked the next street. There was far less limping by opponents, so I found myself playing way fewer hands and then playing fit-or-fold on the turn.
Tilt rears its ugly head
During one buy-in, I had build my stack to almost fourteen dollars, so 138BB. I got all-in with ace-king that turned top pair/top kicker, and lost to a pair of deuces that made the wheel straight. Then I tilted. It wasn’t the money. I’ve lost track of the number of times I have lost $30.00 at 100NL. I just keep calm and re-buy, it’s not a memorable event. But that is 30BB. I’ve gotten used to thinking in terms of big blinds, not dollars, while I play, so I tilted at losing that many.
Final results
Above is the result of the whole ten buy-ins. A blank version of this spreadsheet can be downloaded free here.
This is only ten buy-ins; your results will certainly be different one way or the other. But, as you can see, playing the Blackrain79 strategy as I believe that a beginner could play it led to a bb/100 of 9.6. I won $4.07 in about eight and a half hours. My hourly win rate per table was $0.47, which means the real hourly win rate was $0.96.
Comparing the Blackrain79 strategy to mine
Maybe I should first compare it to playing without a default strategy, to which any reasonable strategy is far superior. The fact that you have a written strategy in front of you and that you play it with fidelity absent a specific reason to adjust puts you leaps and bounds ahead of a player whose default is to “play tight,” who and adjusts by “playing a little looser.”
Blackrain79’s cheat sheets allowed me to be a slight winner over several buy-ins. My one-sheet deafault strategy does the same. Either one is all a beginner needs to earn while they learn.
The advice to raise pre-flop then cbet most flops is the most powerful part of this strategy. In that first video, I took down the pot several times in a row having missed the flop. Being in position makes that even more likely, so the very wide ranges on the button and cutoff are +EV. I am seriously considering loosening up my own default ranges in late position, but I’ll have to run trials first. A cbet is not likely as scary coming from a player with less than 30BB behind.
The biggest difference is that the Blackrain79 strategy is full-stacked and mine is specifically for 30BB – 50BB. Because of that, my strategy treats the blinds as late position, exploiting limpers by raising with a (relatively) wide range. Post-flop play is cut and dried, mainly fit-or-fold. There are far fewer bluffs post-flop in my strategy, but what little I bluff nearly always gets through.
I firmly believe that short-stacking is the best way to reliably make money from the game of poker. But, I realize that is a minority opinion. If you have decided to play full-stacked, you will find that most poker learning resources are geared to full stacks so you are in luck. One of the best resources for you will be Blackrain79.