playing loose in limit hold'em?

[bk1]

is it possible to be a winner, playing loose in limit hold'em?

I am just curious.

All the book says to play tight.

so any comment will be appreciated.

[BenA]

[ QUOTE ]
All the book says to play tight.

[/ QUOTE ]

Which book?

Loose and tight are relative terms, so people will have a hard time answering this out of context. Consider Small Stakes Holdem's hand ranges. Playing looser than those is often correct, but playing 50% of your hands is clearly wrong.

Can you post some examples? Just think that tight is correct, but the better you get, the more hands you play. However, the great limit experts still play 'tight' in the sense of only playing hands that they can extract value from. J9o in early position is not such a hand in a full ring game.

[ThaMaster]

Bein Selective Aggressive is the way to go dont play more than 35% of your hands

[BenA]

[ QUOTE ]
Bein Selective Aggressive is the way to go dont play more than 35% of your hands

[/ QUOTE ]

35%???? Good God. I hope you are talking about short-handed, in which case you'd be correct. But 25% is even way too loose for ring games. Have you even thought about the hands you'd have to play for 35%? That includes stuff like 86o. If you don't believe me, you need to look at your PT stats. If they are 35%, you are playing a lot of -EV stuff. If its less, then why tell another poster that? And if you don't have PT, where are you getting your numbers from?

I certainly don't think that the 15% rule presented by Malmuth is immutable, and I think even 20% can still be 'tight,' but more than that gets dangerously close to money-losing. You'd have to start limping with KTo, and then you'll lose. I suggest following SSH pretty closely until you understand the values of hands. If you have PT and your stats say 15/9/2.4, then you are really doing okay. When you are an expert, it might look like 19/13/3.5, but that's a long way off for most people, including me.

[PantsOnFire]

Playing loose and winning depends on several factors. The more important ones are:

1. If your opponents are weak-tight, playing loose-aggressive is correct.

2. If you are an expert at reading players and reading the texture of the flop, you can play more loose.

So in summary, you can play loose for profit if you have the right opponents and you are an expert a post-flop play. Variance will be higher but so will long term profit.

This is definitely not a stategy for beginners or the faint of heart.

[BJK]

One thing to always remember is that a lot of books that cater to beginning poker players are going to recommend that beginners play tight until they learn the game enough to make adjustments. It's the best way for someone to learn while not losing too much money. However, you also have to understand that most beginners tend to play a LOT of hands (like 60% to 70%). To these players, seeing less than half of all of the flops might seem like something a rock would do.

I follow a mentality that any two are playable under the right situation, but most hands really take a perfect situation to play. Let's take the infamous 72o, for example. I'm going to fold this preflop 95% of the time regardless of what kind of pot odds I'm getting, but if I'm in late position with no one in the pot in front of me, I might just raise with it every once in awhile.

Keep in mind, though, that I make plays like that because I want to get paid when I do hit a hand. These effects are much less in limit than they are in no limit, but in general, I accept the fact that I have to make a few -EV moves here and there to increase my +EV situations when they come up.

But this all will always depend on the other players at the table. With a lot of experts at the table (which I try to avoid), I need to be tricky and do a lot to disguise my hands. With beginners, I can play straightforward and still be profitable.

[Mike]

You have to decide when loose stops and solid play begins or you will find yourself on the rail quickly.

If you are in a game where say an average of six see every flop, you can make more preflop errors in your hand selection and not be making a major $$ mistake per hand.

If you are in a game where the players are tougher and three are seeing the flop, those same loose hands will lose you more $$ per hand each time you see the flop and hurt you much faster. Although in both of these situations post flop play is more important in determining your win/loss rate per session unless you play without thinking at all about what you are doing.

I would also advise caution on putting a percentage on your loose play because of some of the reasons given above, and the idea that if you have been folding hands for two hours, it is very wrong to think you should have played xx% of them. Just as if you went through a period where the lowest you were dealt in an hour was TT, you would not throw away xx% of those hands either.

Caution is imperative, as mentioned above. Because you are asking, I suggest you not start playing differently than you are now. When you are ready to open up your game a little you should be able to state when, why, and how much.