OMG I'm bored of playing TAG (lc)

[PuertoKid]

You don't need to move up or play more tables all the time to combat the boredom. You can do something entirely different and help your game at the same time. Here is a post I made in my blog recently. I don't claim to be a great player or even a good player. Maybe I'm an idiot, but it works for me.
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Sometimes I like to go to NL tables below what I normally play and have some fun and play crazy. Surprisingly, these are usually winning sessions for me.

Last night I sat down at a .10/.25NL table on PokerStars and raised every unraised pot for 3 hours straight. I started with $25 and ended with about $125. I was getting called every name in the book in the chat window: moron, donkey, fish, gay, [censored]. A few people were telling me how they were looking forward to taking all my money, others were telling me to go back to Puerto Rico (a lot of people assume my name has something to do with being from Puerto Rico--it doesn't and I'm not). One person was saying "nh" whenever I won a pot with a garbage pf hand, even when it was against him. This is also the person who came the closest to playing correct against the style I adapted for this session. He obviously had more of a clue than the people cussing me out.

During this session I showed many of my bluffs and garbage hands, but I only showed a good hand once, which was when I had quads and everyone folded to my raise on the flop. The result was that the table went from 3-4 to the flop to 5-7. When that started happening I started making my pf raises bigger. That would bring down the number of people seeing the flop, which was essential for me to play this style with any hope of success. With less people seeing the flop, I could decrease my pf raises .

When people hit a decent hand on the flop against me, they often didn't fully understand proper bet amounts (hey, this was $25NL), so at times my garbage hand would pick up a weird draw and their small bets made it correct for me to chase. When I hit my draw, I'd usually get a good return, which further led to the insults for being a donkey and a chaser. Also, I took down several good-sized pots at the river with a raggedy 2 pair against top pair good kicker. That allowed me to make some nice bluffs on the river when there was, say, a broadway card with rags on the board. It was strange how it worked. People saw me raising with any 2 so they started calling my raises to get in the pot with me. But then they started seeing people losing big pots with top pair against my raggedy 2 pair or rivered str8 and they became more cautious. The net effect was to turn many of them into calling stations against me. They would call my raises and call me down, but became afraid to push or call huge bets on the river unless they had a strong hand. Calling down maniacs is sometimes a sound strategy. But what people didn't recognize is that I was only playing like a maniac preflop. This allowed me to control the pot size and decide when I wanted to get significant money into the pot.

I made some mistakes in this session though, and I learned from them. There were times that I called down some big bets with marginal hands and I should have let them go. There were some players so frustrated by me that it would have been appropriate to call them down with my holdings. But there were others I should have known had me beat good. I did know it, but I talked myself into a call when I felt it was wrong. Those few hands cost me quite a bit. And I didn't need the advertising value of calling down in those spots. My constant raising and showing my bluffs was enough to get me plenty of action. If I had been a bit more judicious in those few situations, I'd have left with well over $200.

After winning quite a few pots with garbage hands, people started saying how extremely lucky I was. Well, when you are in every pot, you are bound to hit the flop hard on some of those hands. I stacked a guy who had JJ when he min-reraised me pf after I raised with 93-off. The flop came T93 rainbow. I bet. He raised. I reraised. He pushed. I called. That scenario played out a few times. Most people at the table were sitting well below the max buy-in, so stacking someone usually added 7-12 dollars to my stack.

Besides being fun, occassionally playing like this is very educational. It really makes you think about your post-flop game and reads. I think playing like this may work better at a full table than a short handed table. People that play short handed tables tend to be more willing to engage and play a wider range against you. People at full handed tables tend to be tighter and more cautious. Of course, tehre are more hands out there you have to be careful of. It is tricky. Regardless of which kind of table I play like this on, when I start getting reraised 3x+ my original raise amount on a regular basis, it is time to stop playing like that or move to a new table.

[JudoGirl]

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Maybe I'm an idiot

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Maybe?

[Mal_Pais]

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(a lot of people assume my name has something to do with being from Puerto Rico--it doesn't and I'm not)

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You're a surfer and you love charging big MexiPipe.

How's my read? [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[Pokey]

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Maybe I'm an idiot

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Maybe?

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There's no "maybe" about it -- he's NOT.

The best way to know how your enemy thinks is to walk a mile in his shoes. Telling yourself in advance, "I'm going to LAG it up to the max today," creating a plan for doing it without going broke (smallest stakes, one buyin only, etc.), and then following through for three hours straight, is absolutely brilliant. Not only do you help develop a very important gear (one that you shouldn't be in often, but one that you should be capable of shifting into when needed), but you also dramatically improve your understanding of the thought processes of players who consistently play in that gear.

So tell us: when you were playing LAG^2, what was the most frustrating thing that your opponents could do to you? What foiled your style the most effectively? I'm guessing TAG, heavy on the "AG." Huge preflop reraises are the most infuriating thing that a LAG can face. If I were one of your opponents, I would have been limp-reraising all-in on a regular basis, usually with a top-10% hand. That's an approach that's going to absolutely short-circuit your "raise every unraised pot" style.

Of course, without having PLAYED as a superLAG, you'd have a much harder time spotting how effective that counter-strategy can be....

I spent a month playing a 35/20 game at small-stakes six-max. It's not a style I'm going to employ permanently, but I've started to develop a deeper understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the style. The biggest strength is the huge "hidden hand" factor. The biggest weakness is that you're typically playing "catch-up" postflop, and your hands simply cannot stand the heat, especially preflop. Against a LAG, preflop reraises (the bigger, the better) with big hands are a HUGE weapon.

[matv]

i like it. ive heard a lot of pros play at lower stakes just to gamble it up and have fun. rather than having to take every hand seriously at their higher levels.

i also agree with pokey's reply.

[AKQJ10]

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That's an approach that's going to absolutely short-circuit your "raise every unraised pot" style.

Of course, without having PLAYED as a superLAG, you'd have a much harder time spotting how effective that counter-strategy can be....

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Interestingly, I've never tried playing that way, and yet i would have intuited that this was the right way to play against a super LAG. Not sure if that means that all the 2+2 books are helping me think about poker theory or what. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]