Micro Stakes, VPIP and Fold Equity

[Burcak]

For long I strongly believed that, all other things being equal, the fewer hands you'd play, the more fold equity you'd have.

However, while I was playing like a total nit, I almost didn't have any fold equity most of the time. I never felt I would fold out any hand I wasn't beating already. It included underpairs, bottom pairs, gutshots... Ofc people folded occasionnally. But mostly, when they were beat.

This isn't a post for whining about how nobody ever folds and how bad this is, in case you are wondering.

One thing I have recently noticed, and then experimented is... that you have more fold equity when you play looser. For me at least, at NLHE50, it strongly appaers so. During sessions where I have my PFR over 18% and agg factor over 4, more people folded hands to my pf 3 bets and postflop cont bets than when I have my PFR at 9%. I made a small research on 4500 hands, and of course, it is the percentage of hands folded, and not the number of hands folded, and it is statistically significant. I tried not changing gears depending on how successful the bluffs are going, but it might have affected me.

Not only that, but you can also feel it if you try it.

The reasoning behind it must be related to how fish see a player (ie. according to them the more hands you must be raising the more good hands you must have). For regulars, I think since they usually raise a bluffer instead of call, they must feel you can re-raise as a bluff.

In summary:

I believed that being more loose and more aggresive results in getting more respect in 50 NLHE... while intuitively it shouldn't be, at least for me. My small analysis of a small sample size supports it. I request how you feel on the subject, and whether or not you have data to help me out on this.

GLHF.