Except for starting a table, when a table breaks up, or in tournaments, I practically never play SH. Ever since I started playing I have prefered a full table to a smaller one but in order to improve my skills I've decdided to play some at the 6-max tables. As usual, these ideas tend to come up when I'm re-reading SS2 (that's how I started playing PLO and PLO8). This time I was reasing the Texas NL part and Doyle's always going on and on about how he prefer smaller games so...

Anyway, I set out to play the Doyle style poker that isn't very successful at the full tables at the lower limits. Basically I was pretty loose, playing all SC's and PP's unless the raise/stack ratio was too big, raising it up myself with all strong Aces, decent PP's and even SC's if in position. I was also betting a lot. A lot.

Well... I dunno... I wasn't too successful money-wise. Twice did I work my stack up to double the buy in or more, and twice did I lose it. Once with AA vs QQ, I raised it preflop, the other big stack re-raised me to $2.50 or so, I re-raised to $8 and he called. Flop came Qxx, he checked it to me and I bet the pot, he pushed and I called the last $6. The other time I got KK in LP and was mini-re-raised, the guy that re-raised me had just raised and then *called* an all-in with TT so I figured that if I push It's not too unlikely I get a call, sure I did, he had AA.

Game-wise I thought this was a bit more challenging than my standard game. Not just because you have to play more hands but there are a lot more marginal decisions and I found myself value-betting hands on the river that I would check in a ring game. I also found that the majority of pots are won without a showdown, which is unusual for these micro-limits. Sometimes I was just thinking "He just can't fold again..." when I was betting my low-pair or gutshot, but sure enough, they tended to muck. You just had to quickly identify the Calling-Stations that would arrive at the table and bust out, those guys are *dangerous* in a short-handed game, calling you down with the mid-pair no kicker, or worse. Had to quickly adjust so I didn't semi-bluff off all my money to them.

After 3 hours of play at two $20 tables or so I find myself up the whopping amount of $7. However, there was two pretty nasty hands that I described above that cost me about $60. From time to time I would deviate from Doyles strategy, but overall I was playing very aggressive and trying to both push small edges and bully people. So my question after all this rambling is...

What's more profitable? Full Table or Short Hand?

Obviously the answer will be "it depends..." but on what? And how much? And what are the short term and long term differences? Is the variance higher, the skill factor more deciding, the table selection more important... what?