Needbeer "In the Well" & short-stacking...

I finally generated some decent traffic to the blog with my post on the VPP record being broken on PokerStars by Kevin 'needbeer' Thurman. On the back of this achievement he has gone "In the Well" and is answering questions in this thread on 2+2.

One thing I failed to mention in my last post was that he is a short-stacker (someone who buys in for 20 big blinds, and tend to leave once they double up), which he has copped a bit of flack for in the thread. Although short-stacking is obviously within the rules, or else you wouldn't be able to do it, it is generally looked down upon by the poker community, which is perhaps why they have been rather unglamorously dubbed "ratholers".

Kevin tackled the 'ethical' side of short-stacking in his Well:

Do you believe there's anything ethically wrong with buying in for 20BBs?
No, it's within the rules of the game, and therefore I don't feel it's unethical. Everyone has an equal opportunity to buy in for whatever amount they would like within the rules. 20BB has been the minimum buyin since PokerStars first launched in 2001.

Do you believe there's anything ethically wrong with leaving a table after doubling-up or winning a large pot?
From an ethical point of view, if a player with 100BB doubles up and leaves, is there any difference between that player and a player with 20BB doing this same thing? And again, it's within the rules of the game. A player has the option to leave at any point in a cash game for any reason. It's not a tournament. If someone objects to a player leaving after doubling up, I suggest other forms of poker than standard NL cash game formats... i.e. SNG's, MTT's, or even limit cash games for the most part..

Personally, I'm not a fan of short-stacking in general, but then again I am not a fan of other players playing well in general. I'm not a fan of great players, good players, decent players, break-even regs or maybe even slightly losing players. Whatever format of poker I'm playing with however many big blinds involved, I want to be playing against huge fish all day every day, who can't tell a full-house from an empty caravan. Unfortunately, this isn't a realistic possibility for your average online table.

Whether or not you are against short-stacking though, I don't see any way of avoiding respect for a guy that has managed to make $400k in 10 months grinding his absolute tits off.

On another note, looking at the blog's statistics, a large amount of the out-clicks made on my blog in the last 4 days were to click on the thumbnail of Kevin's girlfriend. You big pervs! Rather sportingly Kevin posted these pics up in his Well, but I think the not-so-hidden message here could be "hands off"!

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James Atkin