Why TAG is wrong - or - help me sort my brain out

[Guy McSucker]

<font color="#666666">Disclaimer: I don't really believe the following, but at the moment I don't see any source of profit in limit poker. </font>

Hello. Everyone knows I run bad. I always have and always will. It's mainly to do with my own sucking. However, it seems to me that...

A tight aggressive style is fatally flawed.

1) Tight means your starting cards are most often superior to your opponents' cards.

2) Aggressive means you bet and raise a lot.

3) Because of (2) your opponents are then free to fold when they have not improved; because of (1) this is not a mistake. You therefore get minimum money in the pot when you are winning.

4) Your opponents can call, raise, check-raise etc. at will when they hit. You therefore put maximum money in when you are losing.

(3) and (4) mean postflop disaster, which is in no way compensated for by your relatively small preflop edge.

Well, that's the way it feels when I look back over my hands. Over and over I win the blinds preflop or take the pot on the flop when I have something; and get taken for a multiple bet ride on multiple streets when I am second best.

Discuss.

Guy.

[mjkidd]

[ QUOTE ]
<font color="#666666">Disclaimer: I don't really believe the following, but at the moment I don't see any source of profit in limit poker. </font>

Hello. Everyone knows I run bad. I always have and always will. It's mainly to do with my own sucking. However, it seems to me that...

A tight aggressive style is fatally flawed.

1) Tight means your starting cards are most often superior to your opponents' cards.

2) Aggressive means you bet and raise a lot.

3) Because of (2) your opponents are then free to fold when they have not improved; because of (1) this is not a mistake. You therefore get minimum money in the pot when you are winning.

4) Your opponents can call, raise, check-raise etc. at will when they hit. You therefore put maximum money in when you are losing.

(3) and (4) mean postflop disaster, which is in no way compensated for by your relatively small preflop edge.

Well, that's the way it feels when I look back over my hands. Over and over I win the blinds preflop or take the pot on the flop when I have something; and get taken for a multiple bet ride on multiple streets when I am second best.

Discuss.

Guy.

[/ QUOTE ]

You're right, if your opponents are paying attention and you are playing a strict TAG style with no metagame considerations, you're gonna slowly lose. But if your opponents are paying attention, all's you got to do is 3-bet suited connectors a few times and occasionally slowplay a big hand. You need yourself a balanced strategy, yo.

[Guy McSucker]

I think we can ignore the possibility that my opponents are "paying close attention" - it's not happening - and wonder about what the current pool of players is doing on average.

Guy.

[mute]

[ QUOTE ]
3) Because of (2) your opponents are then free to fold when they have not improved; because of (1) this is not a mistake. You therefore get minimum money in the pot when you are winning.


[/ QUOTE ]

Unless you're playing in tough games, then hopefully this won't be true.

[Guy McSucker]

[ QUOTE ]

Unless you're playing in tough games, then hopefully this won't be true.


[/ QUOTE ]

If I get called on the river, I lose.

This is called running bad, of course, and it messes with your head, hence this post. But seriously, the staple diet of yesteryear (raise big cards, hit big pair, bet three streets and get paid off by second best) is just completely absent nowadays. I either don't get paid or I don't have the best hand at the river. Is that not the case for everyone?

Guy.

[dangerfish]

Not getting paid? If anything poker these days is unbluffable. Not that you can't bluff one bad hand off another but getting players to fold made hands is just not easy. I am really surprised your complaing you don't get action.

[marching_on_together]

[ QUOTE ]
Is that not the case for everyone?


[/ QUOTE ]

The answer is clearly no. I remember reading a stats post proably over a year ago from a well respected poster who now plays reasonably high limits, the post detailed his career stats. It showed that the player had flown through the mid limits only playing ~20k hands at 5/10 and 10/20 and winning 2-3 BB per 100. Is that player a good player now, highly likely, was he a good player then possibly did he run good at that time all most certainly. Subsequently that player has had his own well documented downswing. However that initial good run helped build a bankroll and gave him confidence to draw upon when the bad times hit. A 100k hands of losing poker or 200k near breakeven is much harder to take mentaly (and to recover your bankroll) when it is not preceeded by an initial good or even average run. It 's impossible for any of us to know if you suck at poker but it does sound highly likely you have run bad for an extended period. Unfortunatly I suspect there is not much you can do that you are not already doing to improve the situation.

[joker122]

say you have a default BB defense range against an unknown button opener. you play a few orbits and then your HUD kicks in, revealing that the previously unknown button has an extremely high steal percentage and aggression factor. obviously, you would now open up your defense and 3betting range against this button as well as get to showdown more frequently. you would also be forced to take more shots at pots so he wouldn't show an immediate profit from raising OTB. this is basically what has happened in the last 6 months or so - our HUDs have kicked in. in other words, there are alot more players like this button in today's games.

therefore, "TAG" is a relative and evolving idea. TAG used to mean 24/17, but it's hard to beat up the mid-stakes games today with that style because it will be handily exploited in the ways you mentioned. so if that's what you mean by TAG then i agree, currently it is at best suboptimal and at worst "fatally flawed."

essentially, the old LAG (~32/22) is the new TAG, and the new LAG (~45/30) is the old maniac. and unfortunately, this new breed of LAG is just that - a LAG - and not a maniac. what i mean by that is that while they are routinely guilty of what seem like -EV decisions both pre and post-flop, their overall strategy is ambitious and opprotunistic in spirit (albeit excessively so) rather than aimless and irrational. that said, these guys are where the majority of your profit can derive from next to the almost extinct 50/10 guys. they are still exploitable, just less so.

the point is that the theory behind a TAG style (which is, in the broadest sense, the idea of selective aggression guided by presumed equity edges) will always be optimal. all that changes is what the TAG style technically entails.

[Hock_]

[ QUOTE ]
but at the moment I don't see any source of profit in limit poker.


[/ QUOTE ]

This is very, very silly.

TAG or LAG can both win if they're played well. But there are TAGs who play well and TAGs who don't so much. The latter won't win.

[dangerfish]

So true. It is ridiculous to think you cannot be sucessfull playing tag poker or lag for that matter its just a matter of playing either style well.