It's going to be my roommates 21st birthday in a couple weeks and he wants to go to the local card club. Apparently, these live games aren't as competitive as online play but I'm not that familiar with the format and I think the stakes are bigger $1/$2 spread limit ($100 max bet). This is larger than what I play online which is 25NL and 50NL heads up.

Do you guys have any advice on what type of strategy I should use? I want to go play with my roommate, but I also think that it might not be very fun if I buy in full and loose a couple flips and be stuck which is the equivalent of 8 buy ins of 50NL. The minimum buy in for this game is $40 and I was thinking that I might play short stack as this would limit the amount of money I could loose. In NLTAP, it says that you can eek out a profit at low stakes no limit games if you just buy in 20BB and shove 77+, AQ+. I think the strategy for this is that these players will have wide open ranges and you can just shove for value against these loose opens with strong hands. Obviously, this is a far from optimal strategy and I could probably make more playing a deep stack but since I don't want to risk that much $$$ and just want to play for fun would this be a bad idea?

Also, this might mitigate some post flop mistakes I might make too. Basically, I just want to sit around the table with my roommate and don't want to loose too much. So I want to figure out a way to be able to play for a bit without risking too much against the other recreational players at the local card club. Also, what am I going to do without my PT4 HUD? :P

Lastly, any tips for not giving away live tells? I heard that it's a good idea to sit still and do all the thinking about how much you are going to bet without touching your chips, and then after you make your decision bet in one action. Any other tips for betting and etiquette?

Thanks!