The yellow and orange M zones

[Jeff76]

[ QUOTE ]
There's nothing in that sentence about aggression.

[/ QUOTE ]No, but there is in this one:
"You can be agressive or super agressive, but you have to start making moves with hands weaker than those a conservative player would elect to play." (pg 129)

He is DEFINITLY talking about ramping up the agression in addition to widening your range.

[fasteddy1970]

Jeff, I've read the book three times and it was not till this last reading that it jumped out at me. Now that I've been looking at it today, I'm curious about why he didn't give a few examples of lower starting hand stuff and calling raises with lesser hands. He's usually pretty good about giving you anecdotal info. The all ins are no problem nor is figuring out when and where to do it. It's the Yellow Zone where I still have M-15 that I find hardest and that's where I usually am in hour 2 of the 180s that I play.

[Augie]

I wonder how much Harrington's suggestion to play 'looser' applies to a typical online Stars tourney.

In the $22 180 mans, or in the 55K Rebuy, there comes a point where so many people have Yellow/Orangish Ms, that anyone with a brain is looking to make a move.

What that does is make it very hard to actually loosen up your preflop requirements, without getting into a situation where you get reraised allin and have to fold, or get it all in taking the worst of it.

Example - in HOH vol. 2, page 133, Harrington says that if you see a generally conservative player, show down ATo from UTG+1, with an M of 13, that you can deduce that this player understands inflection points and has modified his game correctly.

Honestly, I don't think I can profitably play ATo with a 13 M from UTG+1 in the typical Stars tournies. If I'm lucky, I steal the blinds, but most of the time, because so many people have a low M, someone is probably coming over the top of my 3xBB raise. And if they don't raise, and just call, I'm OOP, with a weak hand (for my position), and don't have anywhere near enough chips to continuation bet if I don't hit. (well, one would have enough chips to cont. bet, but it becomes such a large part of your stack that it can feel like spewing chips when it doesn't work)

In the Stars 55K Rebuy right now, the current avg. stack is 106K with 118 players - avg. M is 9.3.

Perhaps someone can explain Harrington's reasoning, or shed some light on how/when to actually loosen up, and why it's profitable to do so.

I get that low pairs/suited connectors are less playable with shallow stacks. I understand the need to be more aggressive. I tend to steal more in LP, and/or resteal more from the blinds, depending on how the other players play.

What I don't get is why he seemingly advocates loosening our preflop standards in EP, such as the ATo example.

Anyone have the answer?

Be good,

Augie

[fasteddy1970]

augie: A very good point regarding Internet play in general and ps tournies in particular. Try as he might to apply his theories to Internet play, I think Harrington formulated all of them behind 30 years of play in live tables and possibly deeper stacked tournaments and for the sake of the book, had to relate them to Internet play even though at times they may not apply. I'm not critizing him, just questioning the applicablity to Internet play, just like you are. Too bad he's not a participant in this forum

I also agree that the relatively low Ms all around make it hard to limp much less play aggressively with a hand like A-10 os.

I generally live in the Yellow Zone so I'm really trying to make some adjustments. It's not an easy task even with Harrington's help.