Quote Originally Posted by drmcboy
Plus as a LAG the last thing you want is someone smooth calling with a hand. TAGs will let you know they have something or get out, occasionally even folding the best hand. As Dolye says, they know you're crazy and may be betting an ISD and they don't want to give you free cards. Passives you can end up giving your whole stack thinking "We'll, he can't call on the river with anything less than XXXX, I'm firing this third barrel." And then the guy shows you middle pair.
Again this isnt making any sense though, LAG and TAG play the SAME post-flop according to bair so its not just LAGs that would have this problem with smooth calling, TAGs would have it to.

As for bluffing and whether its good or not - I came up with the following principle I called "The law of crookedness", where crookedness is defined as the amount of bluffing done by a player.

The Law of Crookedness - A player should be as crooked as the other tables at the player permit to get the most financial worth for their hand.

At lower stakes, most people will call with bad holdings, so a player cannot be very crooked in the first place. This leads to some not being crooked at all but still being aggressive i.e. straight aggressive poker.

Another pair of terms I came up with to describe players is the conservative-liberal spectrum (no we aren't talking politics here! lol). Conservative players don't call value bets as much for fear they are beat. Liberal players seem to think the other guy is bluffing or overbetting is hand and will call much more. The more conservative the players you play with are, the more crooked you can be. But one they realize you are bluffing them, they might become more liberal, forcing you to be less crooked!

Now lets look at some differences between loose aggressive and tight aggressive. Because loose aggressive players play more hands that won't be ahead as often, they find themselves doing a lot more bluffing. On a conservative table this can still work because that amount of crookedness is permitted. But the loose aggressive player runs into trouble when the table becomes more liberal and they can no longer bluff as much, making their looseness bad value wise. This forces them to tighten up if they wish to beat the table.

Now on the what-beats-what circle it says that loose passive beats loose aggressive, which I don't believe to be exactly correct. Loose aggressive beats a conservative table, tight aggressive beats a liberal table (for reasons stated in the previous paragraph). There seems to be an underlieing assumption that TAG players are conservative whereas LAG players are liberal. If this was true then it would make sense to play LAG on a table full of TAGs. Now it is true that most TAG players are conservative. So LAGs do in fact beat TAGs, assuming the TAGs arent liberal. However, do loose passives beat LAGs?

Well when most people think of loose passive (LP) players, they think of players that will call any pre-flop raise with anything and call the raiser down with a low pocket pair or low middle pair or sometimes with just ace high. So the loose passive player described here is ALSO a liberal player. It is this element of that type of player that allows them to beat the loose aggressive player. However, since aggression is better than passiveness, what if a TAG player could play more liberal? Wouldn't they also have the advantage over the LAG player? There is one difference between the LP and TAG players that should be noted, the TAG player raises a bluff whereas a LP just calls. This gives the aggressor less information as well as the LP player. Now who benefits from this loss of information of both parties if the aggressor is a LAG player? (as compared to raising like the TAG player would do)

I would argue the LAG player does better against the LP player than the TAG player that raises the LAGs bluff/semi-bluff. There are two reasons why: The first is stated in my post The Sheriff's Dillema (link here http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...ic.php?t=13698), since in this case the LP player has turned into a Sheriff, and is facing a Sheriff's Dillema when the LAG makes his bluff. To benefit from this informational sacrafice, the LAG player has to bluffing more than 60% of the time to make it worth it. Most good LAG players won't be bluffing THAT often!

The second is that even if the LAG player is bluffing, he often times has a FEW outs against the LP player, so really he is semi-bluffing with a very weak draw. Because of the informational sacrafice, there is no way for the LP player to know when the LAG player hits. This allows the LAG player to be much more flexible on the river against the LP player, i.e. betting if he hit and checking if he missed. If the LAG player is raised instead, then they must fold, not allowing them to see a "free" card giving them the possiblity of outdrawing you.

So what really beats a LAG player? A liberal TAG or LAG (notice they both play the same against another LAG player) player, though a liberal LP player won't do too bad either. And what beats a liberal TAG player? Any other TAG player.

So then the correct way to play would be to be liberal against LAG players and conservative against TAG players. This makes sense, because a LAG player plays crappier hands to begin with and so is much more likely to be bluffing than a TAG player would be.

Furthermore, you should be LAG on a conservative table and TAG on liberal table.

So there you have four different combinations possible for the best possible way to play for different tables and players: conservative TAG, liberal TAG, conservative LAG, liberal LAG.

Notice that there is always better to be aggressive than passive no matter who you're playing!

Just some stuff to think about..