TAG v. LAG style of play in MSSH (Cross-Post from SSSH Forum)

[Catt]

[ QUOTE ]
If everyone plays the same then it's hard to win, other than those increasingly rare occasions when an uber-fish happens to feel like dropping $10k playing over his head. IMHO, the key to being really successful is understanding how to play solid, but deviating just enough and in just the right spots against just the right players to achieve the metagame results that others have referred to.

[/ QUOTE ]

Agree strongly with this. Wish I were better at finding the "just the rights." Also agree with later statement about some days feeling like finding magic and others feeling like fish -- this really adds to the mental challenge of this silly game.

[wackjob]

as much as I wish my old 25/18 style would work in the current mid stakes SH game, after 3 months of playing pretty close to that at full tilt, i'm agreeing more with stellar here. i've got some pretty good samples on some winning players there, and a lot of the winners are playing 35/25, but the winning range sure seems to be 29/19-40/25. of course just talking about stats sucks, but i think the old style of straight forward TAG is too easily exploitable to anyone who knows it. this discussion comes up time and again, even a year or more ago all the top players seemed to be move to the 30/20 LAG/TAG stats(which was consider a lag/tag then) now I'm not surpised if the optimal 6max stats are in the 30/20 - 35/25 range. of course i'm finding my stats are dictated by how i'm running and my opponents more than anything, but i've been moving steadily from 25/19 towards 30/22 and i'm definately doing better. my sample is close to 80K hands, FWIW.

[disjunction]

I wonder if the main problem for a TAG versus an LAG is kind of this meta-shania thing, where the TAG doesn't know if his opponent is a thinking LAG or a non-thinking one. The thinking LAG can get a lot of mileage out of pretending to be nonthinking.

The main postflop advantage that helps the TAG "play" is the ability to make bluffs based on his tight range, but you give up this advantage if you think your opponent sucks.

[Victor]

disjunction, do you think a tag can be nonthinking, or seemingly nonthinking as well?

[disjunction]

[ QUOTE ]
disjunction, do you think a tag can be nonthinking, or seemingly nonthinking as well?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes.

But it seems obvious that the answer is yes against good LAGs but that they can autoplay against bad LAGs and fish. But I don't understand why in my small sample the TAGs weren't making, say, half of what the LAGs do against fish. Unless it was just sample size.

Edit to add: A TAGs main job I would think should be handreading. An LAGs main job is to be unpredictable (while tending to play good hands further). So by this standard the TAG has a tougher task to think about.

[kurosh]

I don't know why you guys waste so much time dissecting stats like this. When it's time for it, decide if the hand is profitable to play based off the other players and your skill/experience. I range from 25VPIP to 50+VPIP depending on the game. If there are donkeys in the blinds when I am the button, VPIP goes sky high.

[DpR]

This thread is like the DERB thread.

Is there one person out there that claims to have stats similar to 40/30 or even 35/28, 5/6 handed at 50/100 and up that wins 1.5BB/100 (I'll even take 1.0 i guess) over 200k hands?

Where are these people? When I am introduced to even one such person I may start to give some though to that style of play.

I know of several long term tag winners who have tried lagging it up for extended periods of time (btw, I do not consider 30/20 laggy) and the have all gotten creamed.

Additionally, although no one will ever agree with me, variance should be a consideration here IMO.

As for the PT figures, when looking at samples less than ten thousand hands (but more than 1000), there is going to be a survivorship bias. That however, does not explain the poor performance of 28/19 types.

[StellarWind]

[ QUOTE ]
So, what does this all mean. What is your theory?

[/ QUOTE ]
1. The successful players are not successful because they can beat TAGs. The ability of the LAGs to dominate the games I described has virtually nothing to do with their ability to outsmart and outplay the tiny minority of surviving TAGs. There are many whole tables with no classical TAGs at them. Even when a TAG is present you don't play many hands against him.

We need to understand what is good about being a LAG. What is wrong with being a TAG is unimportant and will probably become evident once we understand how LAGs succeed.

2. The answer is not going to be subtle. When entire statistical groups of players are stomping on the game it's time to stop discussing Shania, handreading, and other nuances. There are some very fine players amongst the LAGs but most of them are not very good players and some are downright terrible. Many poor players seem to be winning or at least not losing very much because they picked the favored general style.

3. The results show that preflop aggression has enormous importance. The primary benefit of preflop aggression is to exclude people from seeing the flop. Raises do this directly by driving out players and indirectly by intimidating players into folding in front of you.

Value is also a benefit of raising but we are mostly far beyond that. The extra raises that distinguish the aggressive player don't appear to offer much value.

Notice the tie-in with tight play. If excluding players from seeing the flop is an enormous good, then maybe it follows that the self-excluding ways of the TAG are an enormous evil.

4. While certain TAG-posters are trying to figure out how to beat the LAGs in a duel, the LAGs are busy attacking the fish and hauling away their gold. One message that comes out of my PT research is that "everybody wins". Not really of course but it is amazing what a wide range of players is getting the money or at least not bleeding out (review the numbers I posted). Of course these are players with at least 1000 hands and that is the rub. My research using PT databases from several sites shows that most of the money won/raked from high-level games is supplied by a relatively small number of terrible players that lose up to 15 BB/100. Usually these players don't last long because such extremely poor play is hard to overcome even for a short span.

The key to table selection is to find these players and sit with them. The key to winning money is to take it from these bad players. The key to taking money from bad players is ... playing hands against them. In money terms the skill difference between an expert and a really mediocre 20/40 player is small compared to the difference between the mediocre player and a superfish.

The good news for the mediocre player is the superfish is happy to play lots of hands against him and anyone else that shows up.

I think that's the fundamental issue here. The TAGs forgot to show up. They are so concerned about not taking the worst of it versus the regular players in the game that they allow themselves to be excluded from too many opportunities to go fishing. The LAGs (in general) aren't any smarter than the rest of us but by doing what comes naturally they created repeated clashes with the big donors while sweeping potential competitors out of the pot. If that leads to unpleasant confrontations with strong players and good hands, that's just the price of doing business.

5. Let's recast the last argument in terms of theory. Remember Ed Miller and the $1000000 pot? Theory says large blinds require loose play while small blinds dictate tight play. The more dead money the looser you have to play.

Morons with chips are just as much a form of dead money as blinds, antes, and the NPA's $1000000. This isn't some deep mystery that needs to be solved. TAGs lose because they play too tight. It's a natural consequence of game structure.

There are no "LAG forums" laughing at us because LAGs are primarily unscientific players who don't take books and forums seriously. They just sat down and played. The talented ones prospered using their natural style.

6. So how did this happen to us?

A. Theory and education are both heavily tied to full-ring games. The blinds compared to final pot sizes are much bigger in 6-max. People didn't properly appreciate what this meant.

B. 6-max has the same magnifying effect on the superfish. A superfish at a 6-max table means much more to an individual player. Once again the supply of dead money in relation to final pot size expanded while we weren't looking.

C. Internet poker has lower rakes/tips. Avoided rake is another form of dead money.

[Victor]

talk about it all you want. why dont you play 10k hands 40/30?

[ALL1N]

TAG is ftw.