When are games too good?

[Bob T.]

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The OP's description describes the 8/16 games at Canterbury Park in MN perfectly. When I first started playing these games I thought they were just a crapshoot and the best starting hand never won because you always got chased down.


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Exactly, when things don't go badly, you get a lot of sessions, where you do what I did yesterday. $600+ in a little over three hours. Most of what I did, was not get sucked out on, when I was ahead. Did I mention that I love Tuesday Mornings.

[duckman]

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games can never be too good

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if you hold a certain disdain for profit or making money, i would disagree.

[/ QUOTE ]My perfect game is everybody else limping all the time or calling just 1 raise.
There is gold in them thar hills

[Hair_of_the_Dog]

Most of my raises were on big draws from late position on the flop. I was trying to accomplish 3 things.
1) Get the button to fold, which I could often do.
2) Get others to fold so if I spiked a pair they couldn't draw out on me, which only marginally worked.
3) Get more money in the pot so when my nut flush or straight hits I get that 3 hand chip stacking thing Mr T is talking about, which almost always worked.

I've definitely run well in these types of games and would double or triple up in 2 hours or so. I guess the nice thing was that when I wasn't running well I didn't dump the same amount. It seems like the win potential vs. the lose potential is pretty good. Something like 2.5:1.

I definitely don't hate games like this, but because of the "schooling" effect they aren't the easiest to play. The variance almost makes it a crap shoot. The only edge seems to be preflop hand selection and knowing when you obv drawing dead (although knowing if you are drawing dead in these games is tough too).

Side note: The table was funny in a different way. If I raised from early position most players would fold. I discovered that I could run a very weird bluff (high risk) by raising pf UTG and firing the flop and turn. I did this 4 times and only got caught once.

[jeffnc]

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However I think that typically once you get past 2 or 3 awful players at a table you'll see diminishing returns as other such fish sit down.

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Ridiculous. Common misconception. Play money poker is by far the most profitable form of poker in the known universe, and anyone who doesn't win a virtual ton of play money playing it doesn't really understand poker theory.

[jeffnc]

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half weak/tight half loose passive is better imo.

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Better for what? Not EV.

[jeffnc]

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Remember that the schooling effect does help protect the fish. They are making the pots large, which means some of the ‘mistakes’ they are making are actually correct.

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Partially true, but that is overstated too. The reason is that they have the pot odds to draw to their outs, ASSUMING all their outs are good, which they are often not. This is where a skilled player has another huge advantage.

If they are drawing to flushes or straights on non-paired boards, then yes. If they are drawing to their trips or 2 pair on very dry boards, then yes. But it's when they won't give up their bottom pair no matter what the board texture is that you murder them. Sure, they have 5 outs, and sure, they are getting 8:1, but is that good enough? No, often it's not, because they haven't discounted their outs correctly (in fact sometimes they're drawing dead.) Then they have reverse implied odds to worry about (well, ignorance is bliss, actually, so there's no worrying really going on.)

[jeffnc]

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I definitely don't hate games like this, but because of the "schooling" effect they aren't the easiest to play. The variance almost makes it a crap shoot. The only edge seems to be preflop hand selection and knowing when you obv drawing dead (although knowing if you are drawing dead in these games is tough too).

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I kind of envy you. Guys like me, we have to wait months for a good new poker book to come out. You, on the other hand, have about 20 in the book store waiting for you right now that will be great reading :-)

[One Outer]

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I definitely don't hate games like this, but because of the "schooling" effect they aren't the easiest to play. The variance almost makes it a crap shoot. The only edge seems to be preflop hand selection and knowing when you obv drawing dead (although knowing if you are drawing dead in these games is tough too).

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I kind of envy you. Guys like me, we have to wait months for a good new poker book to come out. You, on the other hand, have about 20 in the book store waiting for you right now that will be great reading :-)

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This is the greatest single post in SSLH history

[PorkchopDJG]

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games can never be too good

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if you hold a certain disdain for profit or making money, i would disagree.

[/ QUOTE ]My perfect game is everybody else limping all the time or calling just 1 raise.
There is gold in them thar hills

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This sounds like Canterbury 6/12 which I like as well.
These loose/passive games are great because you can limp with all kinds of speculative hands and be sure the hand will be played multiway and mostly for only 1 or at the most 2 bets preflop. You can win big pots when you hit big hands/draws. This game is not as profitable overall as loose/aggressive but there will also be much less variance.

[One Outer]

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games can never be too good

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if you hold a certain disdain for profit or making money, i would disagree.

[/ QUOTE ]My perfect game is everybody else limping all the time or calling just 1 raise.
There is gold in them thar hills

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This sounds like Canterbury 6/12 which I like as well.
These loose/passive games are great because you can limp with all kinds of speculative hands and be sure the hand will be played multiway and mostly for only 1 or at the most 2 bets preflop. You can win big pots when you hit big hands/draws. This game is not as profitable overall as loose/aggressive but there will also be much less variance.

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Canterbury represent! That 6/12 game is a gold mine. Just for reference, I have had 2 $1000+ days at CP 6/12 in the past year. That's how good that game is sometimes. And regular posters know how much I suck...