Where do you draw the line?

[lightfungus]

So I was back at my comfy casino in Arizona, playing what I had planned to be a however long session after work. I get seated at a table that at first was decent, enough so that I didn't feel like the chips were gonna fly that night. In fact, a "pro" there that I have befriended, left the table to go to another one. He's a nice guy, and he has played poker for a living for a while from what I can see. He doesn't seem to make incredible amounts of money, as he is incredibly tight and plays very few hands in a loose game, but he is still doing it so I suppose it is working for him. But I digress, after a little bit of recycling of players, I ended up with a table that I had complete confidence in my reads on every one of them, and thus was very comfortable entering a pot with anyone of them. A couple of them, maybe two, were at the point where they still tried to figure out if they had a draw or not. They thought real hard about their cards and one of them was a donator that I had played with before. He was an ATM. The others were weak players, that were easily pushed around. I was making spot on folds as they would show me every hand because they were so proud they won and all (you know the type).

Now that the scenario is set, I have a question that has sort of been addressed in that great article Zybomb posted, and I quote:
Now I am a very humble person at heart, and am as far from cocky as anybody can be (at least males), but we all fall victim to this now and then. On this particular night, and after reading the article as well, I didn't feel like I was too cocky. I also feel like I proved it, because I did get off of hands when I needed too, and I did fold. But you have to loosen up right? The implied odds of you catching something, and you feeling you have the ability to extract the maximum amount from your opponents, should lower your starting hand requirements right? Especially if you have 4 or 5 of these less than decent poker players in with you, no?

So I guess the question is, how much do you loosen up? Where do you draw the line...because I am tempted to call anything when there are 4 callers preflop and they will pay you off with TP/TK easy.

So to add some metrics to this, lets say at a normal table at this casino, I play 2.5 out of 9 hands. How much do you loosen up when you stand to make oodles of money and you feel like a puppet master in hands with 5-7 out of the nine players ? 4 out of 9? 5 out of 9?

At the same time you get this loose image, and they pay you off even more...
I was thinking about this, because I know I played solid poker, and the combination of poor cards and the wrong side of luck left me much lighter. But is it too risky to play that much looser? Does it pay more to tighten up then to loosen up at a table like this?

Comments?

At least I guided my poker pro buddy too my table, and he got cards and made some money. I felt good about that because he said he was having a rough month and the bills were making him a little uncomfortable. Anyway, I already paid my rent this month .

[Talking Poker]

Good post, and excellent questions.

Unfortunately, I don't have much more to say about it than that right now. Mostly because I just don't know.

I'll be interested to see what other people think though.

[Zybomb]

In my opinion, you want to loosen up and play more hands, but those hands with implied odds.

You want to be paying suited connectors and one gappers even for a raise, suited aces and suited kings become playable in LP, as does any pair and even some suited 2 gappers or unsuited connectors.

You generally do not want to be playing cards with low implied odds, like A7o let's say, as chances are you'll lose more money than you extract with it.

As far as playing straight trash, simply because you know if you could steal the pot, if you are going to do this, I reccomend only doing so on the button or one off it.

Trust your reads

There is no specific # of hands you should play an orbit, but you should look for excuses to call on or one off of the button. With enough limpers in the pot and the implied odds that you suggest, almost any two cards become good enough to call with here.

I'd still remain relatively tight in EP, although I would loosen up my calling requirements to include all pairs and suited connectors

Of course make sure you are correct in your assessment on the other players at the table, and you aren't the one being played!

[lightfungus]

Always something to keep in mind. These guys would deserve academy awards if they weren't how I assessed them; they sure knew how to keep the imatard look plastered on their faces for long periods of time.

[lightfungus]

So I was thinking a little more about this, while another rough night of pokee was occuring, and I wanted to present my ideas. If you are sitting at a table where you think you have a significant advantage in skill and understanding of the game, if you do not loosen up considerably you are passing up your edge. This is my argument.

To clarify, if you sit down at one of these rediculous tables and limit yourself to premium hands, meaning you only play a few hands, you are allowing luck to be a huge factor in your making of money that night. Why? Because you are limiting the amount of opportunities for your skill to have an affect on the outcome of that session. Everytime you play a hand, say that 10% edge (very arbitrary figure) gives you a 10% chance to win any given hand by sheer brute strength or knowledge of the game. As long as you play intelligently, everytime you play you are giving yourself this chance in addition to cards alone. Now if you sit around and wait for the top ten hands in holdem, and lets say your skill still gives you that %10 edge, and the cards are giving you a, guesstimation here, 60% chance to win the hand, thats 70% chance to win the hand for that hand. Now how often do these top ten hands come? I think someone said like there are 160 starting hands, around that value.

So we have 10/160*.7 = .04375 or a 4.4% edge through a complete session of 160 hands. Obviously there is going to be significant variance in what kinds of cards you get when being dealt 160 hands...

Now, say for all hands, your cards give you on average a 15% chance to win the hand. So we now have a 10% + 15% edge on any 2 cards. So lets solve for how many hands we have to play to be equal to the "Tight Man" strategy.

x/160 * .25 = .04375 and solve for x, and x = 28. So we have to play 28 hands for our "Loose Goose" to be even with the "Tight Man's" edge. 28 hands isn't even 25% of the time! Thats considered tight right there, at least with a game that has a lot of limping.

What if we increase the probability of winning those tight hands to like 75%, then we have
10/160 * .85 = .053125

then,
x/160 * .25 = .053125, and x = 34 hands. 34 out of 160 hands... that isn't hard to do, nor really that tight. Thats just to break even obviously, so the more you played the bigger advantage overall right?

So, depending on your agreement with the estimated figures of 60% and 15 %, and depending on how much advantage you think you have at the table, I still think you can argue that playing significantly looser than the incredibly tight man is something you should do. Now, is there a balance in there somewhere? Of course, but as long as you play good poker, making mathematically sound decisions in all the hands you participate in, that 10% edge in every hand you play is something you have to consider, no?

[Talking Poker]

I don't think you can do what you just did with math without breaking math.

I see your point though. And yes, while it's true that "You can't win if you don't play," I promise you that it's also true that "Playing every hand is a mistake."

[lightfungus]

That's why I said there was a balance...and where did I break math...

[Kurn]

Two points. Sklansky and Malmuth (Malmuth mostly IIRC) have covered this point in detail, so I'll be brief.

1) Malmuth stresses that at this stage of a player's development, when he becomes convinced of and confident in his edge, he feels he can now play more hands because of that edge. Malmuth says that's a trap, and a prime reason why some apparently talented players succeed for a while, then drop out of sight. which leads to...

2) More hands literally means more speculative hands which by nature introduces more variance, which can be nasty, can lead to tilt or worse yet, begin to eat away at confience.

So to reiterate another point. If you must play more hands, play implied odds hands and play them WITH POSITION. No need to compound the uncertainty by playing them OOP.

[Zybomb]

Yes! That was exactly what I was trying to say in my post. Excellent point

[lightfungus]

Ahhh, position. Thats a good point. And probably explains why my 2 puuurrs have been getting hacked to bits the last couple of days. Playing out of position contributes to losses, even with the best hand? What?