Yooooo

Interesting spot but just to cover on Gripsed: He afaik is a tournament player and I'd expect that comment to either be a troll or really bad logic or perhaps the video was made 5 or so years ago. It is simply an incorrect losing strategy due to many many reasons.

Ok so you are playing weak vs the regs so they are running you over: This really is not good and longterm your results will seriously be hurt by this. What you need to do is figure out their weaknesses and play accordingly. How often have you pulled up their database and reviewed it for example? This is also a problem with the players who are battling the regs: They will be doing it incorrectly. We gotta really put time and effort into figuring out regs.

I have wrote it a few times on the forum recently but all my grind is on none HUD friendly sites now and has been for like 9 months. I didn't plan this as i love a HUD and like looking into stats BUT i just find i make more on these sites maybe due to my live background or 'feel' for the game. HOWEVER I bet i still put more effort into taking notes on regs and really paying attention to their games than most people who use a HUD.

Nice reply Jon! I know what you mean about non HUD sites as I have always really enjoyed playing on them and I think other people rely on HUD's farrrrr too much! Often to the point of it being a negative!

I mainly made the switch to HUD friendly sites as for someone like me playing 20nl the key is trying to improve and it is much easier to review sessions and learn when you have stats! But then while playing on Ipoker I am drawn more and more away from this as above as there is just so many fist pump GII spots due to so many terrible regs/whales!

I am not sure I got my point across that great either tbh! I am really just completely avoiding marginal/high variance spots!

One example could be that I 3 bet AK from sb and get 4 bet by an aggressive reg! My standard line would be to ship and have good fold equity plus decent equity against his calling range! Now I find myself just insta folding as I just don't need to get involved and will find a much better spot within 100 or so hands!

I think that is a massive problem as you are thinking about variance rather than straight up logic.

Let me direct you to a Facebook post about AK which should sum up why this is pretty much always a ship

- Here

That video is incredible THANK YOU @Komododragonjesus

Think you may be running good and longer term I think you'll need to run even better playing like that. I love playing weak/passive guys and when I table select they are my second go to after random stack sizes. I suspect I'm not the only one.

Playing passive versus some players will of course be in my arsenal but all this folding AK v an aggressive reg (in particular) stuff, is going to cost you so much money longterm.

My question has to be, 'Are you avoiding high variance - which you can't do anyway imo, the Lady always gets her way in the end - or are you avoiding value.'
I suspect you are deluding yourself into thinking you're avoiding 'High Variance' situations, whereas in fact, the latter is nearer the mark. If I am wrong please present statisitcal proof your strategy works, rather than misleading yourself with short term variance - the thing you seem to be so valiantly attempting to avoid and oddly, the thing you do seem to be putting so much faith in albeit innocently enough.

I just think you perhaps don't understand variance is all, a very common information gap at microstakes.

I'm not great at writing these days, so pardon me if I come across poorly and no doubt I have missed a lot, just like in my games!

Gl.

Thanks guys this is what I wanted by the post some decent responses! It may well be that I am running good at the moment and I only have a very small sample size so cannot really show anything! Just something that has been in the back of my mind for a while! I just like to think outside of the box sometimes

Nothing wrong with thinking outside the box. I have to because I haven't yet learned how to open it.

Glad you liked the responses and hopefully got something positive towards your learning out of them.

Have fun.

What you think of the video?

Gonna see if I can add something, as I think I kind of see where you are coming from. I also think that I started to head down this road when first started out with the staking team. I felt like the player pool on BV, and at the higher stake than what I played previously, was far more aggressive and I started to try and play a similar style to what you mention. A much more passive style and at the end of the day I believe it was a mistake. I pretty much lost money doing it. It caused me to get caught up in this kind of fancy play syndrome and I believe it cost me money in the long run

I know that this aggressive style of play is being promoted everywhere, and I think for good reason. So I can see where someone would think that very easy way to combat that would to take a more passive line and punish aggressive play when you have a strong made hand. I think there are a few flaws with this, if in fact you are going to play a purely passive style, which I am not sure is the case or not.

There is a reason why aggression is promoted. You can bet and raise a much wider range of hands then you can check and call, if just strictly from a mathematical point of view. When you are betting and raising you have the initiative, it is harder to put someone who is doing that on a hand, as typically someone who is betting or raising has a fairly polarized range with a bunch of made hands to one side and a air on the other. The air can consist of semi bluffs with draws or just pure bluffs and made hands can be moderate, strong, or the nuts. On the semi bluff side you always have equity, as your draws can complete and give you the best hand. As the bettor or raiser you also have fold equity on your side, so mathematically you have much more going for you when you do bet and raise. There are just so many more option available to you when you are using aggression and best of all you don't need to make a hand to do it.

As the caller you typically have a more condensed range of some middling strength hands with some draws as well, but if you want to play mathematically correct it is much harder to be check calling draws than it is to be betting them. You have no fold equity by calling with draws or bluffs, so your only options are to make your hand and get paid off or hope that you can take the hands away on a later street, but that would require aggression and some bluffing. A good example of this would be if you are on the turn OOP with a gut shot and some over cards. There are a decent amount of situations where you can bet this, but if you check it and the villain puts out any substantial kind of bet, you do not have the right odds to be check calling this. If you were to run around check calling a bunch of draws without the right odds, straight or implied, you would be spewing money. The other thing with playing passively is by checking and allowing further cards to come off, you are allowing your opponent to realize any equity they may have, FOR FREE, should they just check back IP or check, OOP, to you and have you check back IP.

Now its not always the case that you have a condensed range while calling and I think this is maybe what you are doing. Of course you can flop strong made hands and put some or all of those into your checking range, rather than betting them, which can make both your check calling and check raising ranges fairly strong. This is something that gets explored more and more as you move up in stakes and try to get closer to an optimal play style. So there are situations that it might make sense to check or check back IP a really strong hand and give a very aggressive villain a bunch of rope to hang himself with. It is certainly very apparent with some villains at the lower stakes that a check, to them, is incredibly weak and they like to attack those checks relentlessly. So I kind of get your thought process in these scenarios.

I guess the thing is, what are you doing all those times when you aren't making a hand? If you enter ranges and hands into something like flopzilla you will see that you only hit pairs about a third of the time and made hands stronger than a pair become far less frequent. So how do you play all those hands where you don't make anything? Just get out of them and move onto the next one. Does your PF Opening range tighten way up to the point where you look super nitty, which then becomes fairly exploitable? Do you play all your non made hands aggressively trying to take down pots with a fold, but then when you make a hand you start checking? Which again, is something some villains will notice. I guess those would be the things I would be interested in hearing.

I think at the end of the day, too much of one thing is not a good thing. I think that is so in life and in poker. Certainly in poker if you are doing to much of one thing, it can start to get exploited by opponents who are paying enough attention. Now maybe on the site you play , at your stakes, they are just all oblivious and have no idea what's going on. When you play far to few hands it can be exploited and not as profitable, as well as playing far to many hands. I think its the same with aggression and passivity. I think you need to strike a balance. I know I have seen videos that say that just pure aggression at the tables can get you in to huge trouble. The same goes for passivity. I think if you are way to passive and just check calling and not hitting you can just slowly bleed money off and before you realized it you are 1 or 2 buy ins down cuz you are not making any hands.

Just some thoughts I had. Hope it makes sense and isn't too far off the mark

I agree with just about everything that has been said re: aggression, whether it's LAG or TAG. But there may be a couple of nuggets from OP's thinking that can be teased out:

1. There's an old axiom in live poker that goes along the lines of, "Know where your profit is going to come from." That's cuz back in the day, you could count on a FR table with only a couple of decent players, and the rest were fish. There was no need to mix it up vs other good players in marginal EV spots. We should try to never miss +EV spots, but if we know half the table is trying to give away their money, it does make sense to get into more hands vs fish than regs. So if you're diligent in table, seat, or site selecting, you can get away with your strategy a bit more. (I play FR and see a few nit regs who still show profit, from doing what you're doing. I have higher variance play by LAGging all over them but I also make more money.)

1a Related to the above, it is true that most of the "poker is solved" theory applies when the game is reg-heavy. You should ALWAYS adjust as best you can when someone is playing non-optimally, and it sounds like you're working on this. But that still doesn't mean that we should play weak and let regs run over us.

2. There is a place for passive play, but not weak passive. Overpairs or TPTK make great bluffcatchers, but only if your V will do you the favor of bluffing, and if you are willing to call down vs their superstrong lines. The game, esp 6max, is so aggro these days, that folding TPTK+ in many spots, esp when you showed even 1 street of weakness, is often incorrect. I make a lot of money by inducing...I also lose a bunch by trying to rep, maybe someday I'll learn? Nah. My point is that calling can be strong in certain spots, like judo and using your opponents strength against them. But this is NOT the same as playing weak-passive.

3. You should be using your image with selective 4bet bluffs, flop raises and checkraises. This is how a TAG can keep up with a LAG (and will be better than tight-passive). Perhaps a good goal for you atm is to move into a TAG game, and not worry as much (yet) about learning to LAG it up. If these really are regs, and have HUDs, then they will never back off until you give them a reason to. One of my oddly happiest accomplishments is that there is one reg who is now reluctant to get into pots with me. It took a lot to train him, but now it's one less spot at the table I have to worry about. My goal was/is to be the guy you hate being in pots with. You want these regs to give you the same space you're giving them, and that can only be accomplished with aggression.

Thanks guys! From the comments I realise I didnt word it quite correctly as I am defo not weak passive! More just avoiding marginal spots! Im finding it hard to get my point accoss tho! An example from just now could be:

I am BB and LAG reg min opens the button
I 3 bet 10s from the BB
He 4 bets....................I fold

Against a LAG previously in a blind war I would have most likely shipped the 10s but I just feel like their is much better spots to get the money in!

Na I think you worded it fine and all made sense. Just a different way of looking at it and like most will always still feel aggression in these spots is the best way forward. Always good to think about things on this level.

The video of AK btw for anyone who doesn't use FB

Hey, nice posts here, but you forgot an important point. Please not be angry with me now, but why people play regulary NL10 or NL20? Because they are bad players, good players move up, or the handful of crusher on micros are bots or guys who live in countries where you can easy grind for living on micro-stakes. All other crusher are luckboxes (move up and go broke) or some good players who really want to learn the game and not want to get rich overnight, they move up with time and never look back.

When I played micros, years ago to built my bankroll the regulars play very different than today. The standard-table on NL25 2010 was 2 fishes, 3 medicore/bad TAG-player and well, me, the LAG-tard but with the highest winrate at the table, I dont think that my 2010-style works well in todays games. The weakness of the average was, folding to much early street (on late street way too much calling) , barreling to obv and if they steamed, it was lot more passive calling-steam.

Because of trainging-sites and pokerbooks there rise up a new kind of bad player, I have no name for it, but it is the NL10 and NL25 player who thinks he is god at the table. That are the guys you mean I think, they play dumb aggressive poker, loose aggressive preflop (because its cool, not because it is mabye the right play, it isn't in equilibrium with 100bb without antes I think), putting their egos at the tables, bluff too much, think you bluff too much and call you off with all kind of bluffcatcher. Keep in mind that they are modern players, normally use huds with all kind of bullshit in it and fold23bet 70% in 100 hands means "business" for them.

Well why play optimal poker against bad players? These players are bad (they simply have no deep understanding about the game and how to play poker well, because they do not the work besides the tables, they think it is enough to read a book or follow Ben Sulksy, okay following Ben Sulksy cant be bad for your game but it is not enough), even if the stats are loose aggressive and "winning-player-stats". Agree these guys are more annoying than the average in 2010. But the good news: bad players don't adjust or make bad adjustments and this type of player makes really funny adjustments.

You should't play weak passive against them but some part of your game can be weak passive. I think tight play preflop (more linear 3betting, you have to 3bet enough and the right hands with good playability because another leak of them is to overadjust against a good 3bet-strategy), more thin value and fewer bluffs and some balls of steal when stacks goes in is the way to go against that kind of egomaniac.

@your example: Against LAG-tard (whee I have the right definition now) you cant fold TT there. Should be obv why, either your call or you shove.

Yep this is truly a great post! Exactly the kind of players I am talking about! The pool is pretty big at 20nl speed and I have about 4-5 players marked as good regs! All the rest are the type above or just total whales!

I agree with all the comments that weak passive is not the way to go and think I have maybe over adjusted a little bit but still have no doubt in my mind that a sub optimal exploitable strategy will make more money at these stakes than somebody following snowie to the letter! I feel a challenge brewing

Yes Jon I watched the vid and this is actually the kind of thing I am talking about! I know what the 'correct' play in in most situations but just really feel that adjusting to a sub optimal strategy is the way to make most money at these stakes! I am not even saying I am definitely right but I am yet to be proved wrong and my results so far in a short sample have been decent!

I recently been thinking about adding AK to my 3bet folds from certain p[ositions , like Btn vs UTG type situations , i want to 3bet for value because the tendency for people to call to wide and make postflop mistakes . I just don't think people at these stakes have very wide 4betting ranges though usually only somewhere around 1% ish over quite large samples.

I mean i 3bet AJ from the bb vs sb but i certainly don't want to 3bet 5bet it for value , is my thinking wrong to be using AK like an AJ in say an UTG vs BTN situation ?.

Just a couple of thoughts:

If the "sub optimal" play is making more money then it's the optimal play

Variance will nearly ALWAYS be higher against regs. Your winrate against regs (and theirs against you) should be tiny compared to that against fun players and as winrates go down, variance goes up. Just because winrates are lower though doesn't mean you can't be profitable against regs.

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I don't like your approach but I understand it. If you're losing significantly to the other regs then avoidance is an ok-ish strategy and might make more money in the short term but it hinders you significantly in the long term as you won't be improving and won't be able to move up in stakes as the higher you play there are typically more and more regs (and they're better!).

A good way to approach it would be something like this. Take your TT vs LAG button example. Jam on him or call, whatever your usual play would be and continue to do that for a moderate sample of hands. Then pop open your tracker and see how that play is doing and if it's winning then keep doing it and if it's losing then figure out a way to make that scenario more profitable. Repeat for every possible scenario in poker and become a 10kNL end boss!