Experimenting with a new style (long)(Nicho plz read)

[dboy23]

I remember reading some of Nichomacheo's posts about how he liked to play sort of passive preflop. I'd like to expand on this and get a serious discussion going.

What I think he means is not always reraising with your pretty good hands, such as AQ, AJ, JJ, TT. Or course you make your standard raise, but the key is to let your opponent keep control. And this is hugely +EV aggainst aggros. There is nothing better than trying to be pushed off TPTK by his huge bets. This is a great strategy against aggros. There are the aggros who will just throw out tons of chips to try and fold you. And when they have a hand they almost always bet way smaller, letting you off cheap when you don't catch good. This seems better than reraising pf, cbetting, and having a tough decision to make almost everytime you don't catch.

I must reiterate that this style seems to work best at the $50 level. Probably the $100's, but i've never played their so I don't know. The lower levels tend to have more calling stations and tighties than anything. I don't know what it is about poker, but it seems like the greater the stakes, the more thrill your average villain gets out of bluffing you.

I can't even count all the hands where if I had taken control he would have folded. I would have won a small amount of chips. But instead I let him keep betting at me. I won a lot of chips where he was drawing virtually dead or to runner runner.

Here is a recent example. I don't want to dig through for the HH so I will just type it out.

I have K9o in the SB. I elect to limp because villain has been playing back at me pf and I don't want to inflate the pot much with K9. He checks.

flop: AK5. He checks, I bet 40. He thinks for a bit and raises to 160.

Now I know this villain loves to raise pf, and loves to play back at me. I am pretty confident he doesn't have an ace, or even a king. I bet the size of the pot on the flop, but it was only 40, and he interprets that as weak, because he is always betting 60 - 100 into unraised pots on the flop. So I am confident he is trying to take it away from me.

I call.

Turn: AK5A (360)

This was a good card for me. If he was raising on a broadway gutshot he got nowhere. Basically if my read was right on the flop, it has a greater chance to be correct now. There are less aces that could be in his hand. And it gives him a scare card to use. He doesn't know that that card doesn't scare me at all.

He bets 300. I call.

River: AK5A9 (960)

He bets 500. And I call.

Nothing has changed. It was rainbow and unconnected. I'm somewhat expecting to see a king at this point, with a bad kicker though for a split. The only hand I'm really worried about is K2 - K6 or so. His pf raising range is wide I think he raises most kings anyway.

So anyway, he shows Q7 and I scoop a large pot.

So the moral of the story is that Nicho is right. It is ok to pass up some pf EV when your opponent is capable of spewing EV all over the place postflop.

Also, opponents get so mad when you wreck them with lol induceaments. I have been called a donk so many times. They say things like, "You ever played poker before?". "Your an idiot".

So not only do you get lots of chips, but you get implied tilt odds.


Edit:

Since I have started thinking about these things and implementing them I am 13/16 in $52.50s.

[jay_shark]

Yes there are times when Nichos strategy is a great way to play against certain opponents . There are other times , when it's correct to play a more aggressive way which adds EV provided that your comfortable playing postflop .

If your opponent is the type of player who always folds to your re-raises , then you do much better by popping him instead of smooth calling . On the other hand , if your opponent is terrible enough to spew EV postflop which is greater than the EV he would have left behind had he folded , then it's right to smooth call .

You can sum this up the following way :

If your opponent is terrible postflop and you have position , then it's usually correct to smooth call his raises . When you're oop , it's usually correct to re-raise your good hands given that your opponent is a decent postflop player . You don't want to see a flop against this type of player so you re-raise hoping that he/she folds .

[roommate]

As you all know I'm nicho's roommate... We watch each other play a lot. His strategy like you correctly said, will get you called a "donk" an awful lot. It is important to remember that he definitely game selects for the aggro chip spewers that this works against. It isn't the optimal strategy against most opponents, but against an aggressive bluffer it works great. Unfortunately, I'm sure after that hand you described, the opponent likely shut down and wasn't so quick to give action.

As a whole this strategy is very reactive... and many people won't like it because of that. But I say let your opponent have some momentum in a hand, and then trip him.

Nicho's on break this week... I hope my response was useful.

~rob

[Indiana]

quickly read it but it seems u r going in 2 different directions in the same post. Check/calling an aggro is one concept...while playing your monsters passively pre and on flop is another. Please attempt to summarize exactly what u r saying.

By the way, just simply check calling a guy down can be very dangerous. Its not always the best strategy. If you truly believe you have the best hand and some free cards can hurt u, you are often better off raising....it just depends. As for the K9 hand, well sure I can see a call down there.

Indy

[lbiars]

Another advantage of smooth calling preflop oop is that you are keeping the pots smaller, giving the advantage to the better post-flop player. If you're not the better post-flop player, you should raise more oop preflop with good hands, which is what a lot of bad players do.

I'm perfectly happy smooth calling a preflop raise with AQ or 77 in the bb, and getting away from it if I don't flop well. Sure I'm giving up some equity by not playing a good preflop hand strongly, but what am I gonna do against an aggressive post flop player when the board comes small and he could be holding anything? I'd rather smooth call and let him dig his own ditch if I hit the flop. Unless I'm completely card dead, I'm going to hit a flop and bury him if he doesn't stop firing.

Lee

[PrayingMantis]

I don't know what you mean exactly by "Nichomacheo's strategy", or "new style", but this hand looks 100% standard in most normal circumstances. Of course you can raise pf, but nothing wrong with limping. This is probably the easiest and most classic board for such a line. However, with many other boards where you hit your K in a similar manner you might find yourself in much more trickier spots than here, and the decision about whether to play it this passively could be much tougher. Really, both the flop and turn and obviously river are working for you just great, but change one card on the flop and/or the turn card and your line might suck.

Edit: also, not to discourage you, but thinking that something is working for you since you run good for 16 games could be dangarous. Even complete monkeys can run good for more than that.

[dboy23]

[ QUOTE ]
Yes there are times when Nichos strategy is a great way to play against certain opponents . There are other times , when it's correct to play a more aggressive way which adds EV provided that your comfortable playing postflop .

If your opponent is the type of player who always folds to your re-raises , then you do much better by popping him instead of smooth calling . On the other hand , if your opponent is terrible enough to spew EV postflop which is greater than the EV he would have left behind had he folded , then it's right to smooth call .

You can sum this up the following way :

If your opponent is terrible postflop and you have position , then it's usually correct to smooth call his raises . When you're oop , it's usually correct to re-raise your good hands given that your opponent is a decent postflop player . You don't want to see a flop against this type of player so you re-raise hoping that he/she folds .

[/ QUOTE ]

I should have probably clarified more that this does only work against those opponents capable to pulling a trigger or two postflop. These opponents are exactly the type that we are usually uncomfortable with postflop. For this reason we don't want to build large pots for him to have a good crack at when we don't hit.

If your opponent will "always" fold when you reraise him then he is probably raising pretty light. And again you must evaluate, like you said, whether or not more EV will be had by trying to fold him preflop, or trying to siphon more out of him postflop.

[dboy23]

[ QUOTE ]
As you all know I'm nicho's roommate... We watch each other play a lot. His strategy like you correctly said, will get you called a "donk" an awful lot. It is important to remember that he definitely game selects for the aggro chip spewers that this works against. It isn't the optimal strategy against most opponents, but against an aggressive bluffer it works great. Unfortunately, I'm sure after that hand you described, the opponent likely shut down and wasn't so quick to give action.

As a whole this strategy is very reactive... and many people won't like it because of that. But I say let your opponent have some momentum in a hand, and then trip him.

Nicho's on break this week... I hope my response was useful.

~rob

[/ QUOTE ]

Your response was useful.

A couple questions to you guys.

When you say he game selects for the aggro bluffers, what exactly does he look for? Are their specific sharkscope patterns that tend to indicate aggro bluffers? Perhaps the guys who have taken shots at high levels, have some serious swings in their graphs, and hopefully a -ROI%?

As for decline in action after I calldown. Yeah it happens. Sometimes they will pick it back up, and sometimes they go into mouse mode, which helps me anyway. Once they start playing a game they aren't used to, I can usually exploit them. Sometimes this involves getting pretty aggressive myself. This sometimes causes them to try to take another stand against me. Then we are often back to the "new style".

[dboy23]

[ QUOTE ]
quickly read it but it seems u r going in 2 different directions in the same post. Check/calling an aggro is one concept...while playing your monsters passively pre and on flop is another. Please attempt to summarize exactly what u r saying.

By the way, just simply check calling a guy down can be very dangerous. Its not always the best strategy. If you truly believe you have the best hand and some free cards can hurt u, you are often better off raising....it just depends. As for the K9 hand, well sure I can see a call down there.

Indy

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't know what you mean by going in 2 directions. I'm talking about playing a specific way against a specific player type.

In regards to giving free cards, well for one they really aren't free. He is betting the hand for you, usually pretty big bets too, because he is trying to fold you. If he were betting small like he had a draw, then yes, a raise is probably the best play.

You will have to evaluate the board and determine the chance he is on a draw, a bluff, or a good hand. And even if you determine there is a good chance he is on a draw, you may still only choose to call. This may be the case when the implied odds are low because there isn't much left to bet after calling his bet.

In fact, sometimes you welcome the draw coming in, because it is a scare card that he can use. Of course there is the risk that he actually has it too. After the scare card comes in, there is almost no point raising though. If he made he hand you get reraised, and if he was bluffing he folds.

What are your thoughts regarding free cards and draws when he is most likely bluffing. Please expand.

[dboy23]

[ QUOTE ]
Another advantage of smooth calling preflop oop is that you are keeping the pots smaller, giving the advantage to the better post-flop player. If you're not the better post-flop player, you should raise more oop preflop with good hands, which is what a lot of bad players do.

I'm perfectly happy smooth calling a preflop raise with AQ or 77 in the bb, and getting away from it if I don't flop well. Sure I'm giving up some equity by not playing a good preflop hand strongly, but what am I gonna do against an aggressive post flop player when the board comes small and he could be holding anything? I'd rather smooth call and let him dig his own ditch if I hit the flop. Unless I'm completely card dead, I'm going to hit a flop and bury him if he doesn't stop firing.

Lee

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree with most of what you are saying here.

Keeping the pot small OOP is usually a good idea in general. You have quite the positional disadvantage as everyone is aware.


You say that if you are not the best postflop player, you should be more inclined to reraise preflop. Is this to commit you to the pot so that you can't be forced out by his aggressiveness?

Also, I believe you will fare better using this "keep the pot smaller pf" strategy rather than reraising when you are card dead.