[James.]

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PS note that I tend to play reasonably decent and aggressive players, which of course taints everything I write.

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duly noted. what i have found since i started playing a bit more LHE online(i started a hiatus of serious online play back in July)is that the tighter players on the site i play are hyperaggro. they spew chips in all the wrong spots, as well as get uncharacteristically passive in wrong spots. hopeless semibluffs or pure bluffs that would never work with the frequency needed to make them viable plays.

case in point the AA hand i posted. i was raised on the turn there by A [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]9 [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]. he had picked up a flushdraw with his gutty, and even when it was pretty obvious that both of us were never folding on that turn, he raised it. at that point my image would not be one that had bet/folded much, but i had been playing tight.

as a result i have become a showdown monkey in these certain small and medium stakes games. why? because the players are tight and aggressive, but they suck. they bluff/semibluff raise way too much, so in lots of HU spots i'm showing down most anything reasonable. the biggest difference i've noticed in the lower stakes vs. the medium or higher stakes TAGs, is the ability(or lack thereof)to hand read and put pressure on in the right spots. all of this said, my point is i think these lower stakes TAGs have the grrr bet, bet, try to be aggressive-mentality that is exploitable in various ways. since i read this as such, i thought i could get a bet out of him that i otherwise would not have. the flip side of the coin, is that often players that have this mentality are very paranoid of getting bluffed themselves, so they(as you alluded to)will call very light(Ax, pp, etc.)on that river.