Size Does Matter

When you play No Limit Texas Hold 'em, the size of your chip stack makes a huge difference. The amount of money you have at the table influences your gaming strategy greatly. For instance, the amount of money you are willing to spend on the buy is an excellent indication of how confident you are in your gaming skills. If you happen to be a newcomer to poker, then you will probably buy in for a relatively small amount and vice versa.

Nevertheless, the most important fact you need to take into consideration is the way your stack size affects implied odds. For the poker beginners among our readers, let us explain what the term 'implied odds' means. Simply put, this term refers to how much money you can expect to nab in the near future if you are lucky enough to land a good hand, considering the chance of making that good hand. Knowing your implied odds during poker play is simply a must...

Suppose you're holding 5D and 4D in your pocket preflop. You have to admit that these suited connectors are a quite weak hand with little potential for you to hit a straight or trips on the flop. However, you have much better chances if hitting a draw, such as a straight or trips. To make a nice profit on this draw, you will most likely need to call a bet on the flop and wait for the turn and river in order to catch a card you need on order to make that desired hand. Thus, if your ultimately decide to chase a flush or straight draw and your stack size is small, you can not expect to make a lot of money.

Naturally, different games require different buy-ins. Poker games typically played at home do not require big stacks. 10 to $20 buy-ins will certainly do for a home game with $0.25-$0.50 blinds. Games played at casino facilities usually feature varying stack sizes. Today's gaming establishments in Las Vegas normally restrict the buy-ins to approximately 40 big blinds, so players tend to have small or medium sized stacks. Poker rooms operated over the Internet share the tendency of restricting buy-ins to 100 big blinds, so many online poker lovers have pretty large stacks.

On top of increasing the value of speculative hands (like the suited connectors mentioned above), the size of a stack usually makes the game much more interesting. A player's stack size is considered by many an excellent indicator of his success in the game. Having a large stack makes bluffing a much more valuable tool throughout the game. A large stack keeps your opponents guessing whether you've arrived with this stack and just did not have the time to lose some of it yet, or whether you are simply an accomplished player and they must be careful when playing against you.

So, as you see, size does matter! The bigger, the better!