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.

[dlorc]

I think its a case of the weaker players not really being that situationally aware but they dont want to have to deal with your impending aggression that they WILL notice.

I've noticed that if your image is that of a strong player and the weaker players are aware of it then you will get less action off them and most of the time they'll either nit it up vs you and try and setmine you or counter you with excessive aggression.

Basically - they would rather try and flop the nuts vs you and hope you stack yourself off than try and counter a game they dont like playing versus.

[stever1k]

I only play NL25SH, and I'm running 16/12 for about 30k hands now. I 4-6 table most of my time, and there are sessions where I run at 30/20 at one table, while I play with 8/4 at the other.

I sometimes notice, that players fold on the nitty table more often (at least I have the feeling), also I already noticed a few time, that regulars at these limits, playing solid TAG style write an "hmm ...JJ" in the chat and then fold to one of my 3-bet writing "QQ+?" into the chat. Of course I don't feel comfotable beeing so readable - but I cannot decide which cards I get.

On the other table I feel, that I get some light 3-bets when I try to steal the blinds for the n-th time. Also that bad players try moves on me like donk/allin or c/mr on dry flops, beeing the opinion that "this aggressive player cannot hit the flop everytime". Well I think this is just a subjective thing.