Two Plus Two Newer Archives - The Sexiness of a Lag

I was having a discussion with one of my students who asked me about the statistic W$WSF and how to get his higher. We're still working on it (and it's a big part of my game that I'm trying to improve as well), but it got me to thinking so I wrote a few thoughts down and decided to turn it into an article for my new site.

Here it is Xposted:

- Slider - The Sexiness of a Lag 11/01/01

Does a girl want to sleep with a guy who is really conservative, passive, and unoriginal? He'll probably be a very bad lay. If they do, they'll be dreaming of the steamy aggressive, emotional, wild guy who rides a motorcycle, carefree, dominant alpha male.

You want to be that wild guy. In poker, that guy is the one with a high W$SF.

Every few months a new fad hits the poker community like 3 betting, 4 betting, etc. It’s important to stay attuned with these because you can be damn sure that you’re opponents will be paying attention to them. The latest of these fads is almost an obsession with the pokertracker statistic, W$WSF.

To put it simply, the statistic means the percentage of the time you will win the pot when you have seen the flop. The higher it is, the more pots you are winning without showdown.
A standard winning tag will have this statistic in the 40-44 range in Midstakes No-Limit Games. The strange thing is that many loose and aggressive players will have this in the range of 44-50. Say you have a TAG with 41% W$WSF and a LAG with 48%. The LAG is winning 17% more pots without showdown than the TAG (not 7%!). That’s HUGE.

Now, the first question I asked myself was: If I’m playing better hands then them on average and other players know this too, then why are they winning more pots without showdown.

One answer is they have to in order to be winning with that style. They rely on picking off pots from you when they smell weakness by double barreling (firing 2 streets), triple barreling, bluffraising continuation bets, floating continuation bets. The straightforward tag will use these tools as well, but not as their primary weapons. Why not?

When many people started playing poker, the term “tight is right” gained popularity. It worked very well in live and online games early on. I personally learned this bottom up approach. I played extremely tight and had good results by the sheer fact that my hands were better on average than my opponents and I value bet them better than they could. By doing this, less emphasis is put on hand reading and more on hand strength.

Nowadays, every TAG at your table understands why “tight is right” worked. The edge in playing tight and predictable has been decimated unless you’re playing with total donkeys all the time.

So we understand that all standard Tags know that they should be trying to extract maximum value from their hands, but they should also be exploiting other tags tendencies to fold!

Everyone nowadays is asking how can I get my W$WSF higher? There’s no clear cut answer other than to experiment… but if you’re asking this question I can guarantee you don’t mix your game up enough. Next session you play, try:

1. Checkraising bluffing cbets
2. Floating continuation bets
3. Double barreling when scare cards come or when you think the hand range of your opponent can’t be very strong compared to the board
4. Against people who double barrel too often, checkraise semi-bluff the turn.
5. Continuation bet more in spots that you wouldn’t otherwise. (3 way to the flop etc)
6. Betting more turns when the pfr has checked behind and you think he has given up.

If you're a math guy, think of it this way. Your heads up to the flop and say for this argument that both hands have like a 1/3 chance to hit the flop. 4/9 of the time, neither of you will hit anything. To get better, concentrate on winning more of those pots and forcing your opponent to fold on later streets too.

You can only get so good at betting hands for value. The players who crush the games have spent time improving their ability to win more pots with well timed sheer aggresssion. It’s like Sun Tzu said – where the enemy is weak attack.

Humans fear what they do not know. If you become unpredictable, you will gain more respect from your opponents. I believe that part of the reason why LAGs generally have a higher W$WSF is the fear they inspire from other tags.

There’s a reason why playing LAG is hailed as romantic and sexy and why being a nit is shunned upon. LAGs terrorize their opponents and subconsciously force them into making mistakes. I’m sure you’ve had hands where you call in position with the intent to raise a lot of flops but you talk yourself out of it after with lame excuses like “oh he calls everything, that board surely must have hit them.” That’s fear talking and every time you back out, the lag is profiting by your reluctance to take a stand.

It's OK to make a mistake. When you do get called and know that throwing more chips into the pot will solve nothing, DON'T DO IT. When experimenting with these techniques, be aware that it's not a cure-all to low W$WSF. You're going to have to find situations where each of these tactics are applicable and against which opponents. In future articles, I'll try and use some hands where I use all of these techniques.

If you inspire fear, you will be much harder to play against and people will stay out of your way while donating their money to you in the process.

- Slider - StackTheFish

I'm not a professional writer so if this was somewhat rambly, I apologize.