Loose-passive/aggressive?

I'm not new to texas holdem, but not close to a solid player either. Since I started playing, and up until now, I've played an extremely tight/aggressive style and it has worked somewhat for me. However, after watching the professional players do their thing, I've began to try out a more loose style. I've noticed a lot of them like to play much more "unconventional" starting hands: A2s (almost any suited cards for that matter), unsuited connecters, suited gap cards, unsuited face cards, etc..

However, this is all from watching huge multi-table tournament games: WSOP, WPT and such. Do the pros play this style throughout the tournament (since you don't see much of the small-blinds portion of the tournament), or is this just their style change after the blinds are raised. Can this style of play work in simple ring games, or is this strictly more of a SNG/tournament style of play?

Edit: And of course playing these hands will depend on position, player personality, and bet sizes, blah blah blah...

1). if you have better postflop skills than your opponents, playing a wider range of hands should give you more opportunities to win pots and therefore increase your winrate.

2). playing more hands makes your hand ranges harder to read and therefore more difficult to play against.

Originally Posted by Vi-Zer0Skill

1). if you have better postflop skills than your opponents, playing a wider range of hands should give you more opportunities to win pots and therefore increase your winrate.

2). playing more hands makes your hand ranges harder to read and therefore more difficult to play against.

Thank you for the quick response. In your opinion, do you think this is an acceptable ring game strategy (by acceptable I mean does it have the ability to come out ahead consistantly), or should I save it for the S&Gs and tournaments?

i think you need to apply it slowly to your ring games. if you are admittedly an "ok" player, then you need to think more about fixing your post flop leaks than opening your starting range, imo.

Chopper is spot on. I'll add my 2 cents:

There are some cash game misconceptions like:
"LAG's make more money than TAG's"
"tight players are bad postflop"
"LAG's are postflop gods and own all those tight nits "

In tournaments:
- your chips have dynamic value, that's why threat of being destacked is a much bigger weapon, than in cash games
- there is also concept like "chip advantage" which in cashgames is useless
- blinds are bigger relative to stacks, and stealing blinds has great impact on chances of winning a tourney

Those are powerful tools of good tourney LAGs. In ring, OTOH calling off entire stack is only matter of EV and all-in bets lose some of its power. Lagging in ring is not about stealing blinds building stack and knocking out players with rags. It's about entering the pot on cheap streets and having advantage over defined hands/ranges on expensive streets. Look at Genitruc's thread "Operation: What Next" in Blogs & Operations section, there is a piece of good LAG cashgame play.

But you can still win a shitload of money in ring games with tight play, because mixing up is more about proportion of certain type of hands in your range (and playing it accordingly posflop with well timed aggression), than total width of your entire preflop range.

I'm probably the biggest preflop nit amongst all regulars on my donkstakes tables and I still have an absurd winrate because I try my best to use my image and their postflop reads against them.

Don't be in hurry with opening up preflop unless you want to learn & experiment (for a fairly big price). But if you want to learn & still win money in the learning process, then advance slowly.

Going on uNL shorthanded tables and attempting to play Genitruc poker costed me 1/3 of my bankroll. And I have very conservative roll management rules.

Originally Posted by kpreston

I'm not close to a solid player either. Since I started playing, and up until now, I've played an extremely tight/aggressive style and it has worked somewhat for me.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
And don't try and emulate the highlights packages on tv, trust me.
What are your pre-flop stats? If you're like 8-7 then maybe try loosening up to 12-10 or something.

Originally Posted by daven

Originally Posted by kpreston

I'm not close to a solid player either. Since I started playing, and up until now, I've played an extremely tight/aggressive style and it has worked somewhat for me.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
And don't try and emulate the highlights packages on tv, trust me.
What are your pre-flop stats? If you're like 8-7 then maybe try loosening up to 12-10 or something.

Stats as in flop seen percentage? If so, I was hovering between 15-20%. It's gone up a bit since I've started experimenting a little.

TV pros understand position, range and fold equity (lol I think so anyway) and until you understand these concepts you shouldn't bother trying.

Originally Posted by kpreston

Stats as in flop seen percentage? If so, I was hovering between 15-20%. It's gone up a bit since I've started experimenting a little.

stats as in:
1) Voluntarily put money in pot
2) Pre-flop raise

if you're seeing 20% of flops then your play is already pretty loose, definitely don't try and play any looser. In fact, best thing to do would be look at aokorongly's starting hand chart and play that for a while - learn to play TightAggressive = something like 14-12 pre-flop

I wanted to start off by thanking everyone for giving me such a useful and warm welcome to the forum. Being that this was my first thread, it's nice to see such a helpful community here.

The common consensus seems to be continue to play tight in ring games, which I think I'll do. I have however opened my range just a little bit, playing mid/high suited connectors and unsuited face cards more often from late position (which I previously did not do).

Originally Posted by daven

if you're seeing 20% of flops then your play is already pretty loose, definitely don't try and play any looser. In fact, best thing to do would be look at aokorongly's starting hand chart and play that for a while - learn to play TightAggressive = something like 14-12 pre-flop

That 20% I gave you is really a useless number. Since I commonly play SNGs to stop myself from becoming bored, my flop percentage is very influenced by short-handed poker play.

Once again I want to thank everyone for being so helpful. I still have a lot to learn, and it's nice to know I have experienced players willing to help me do just that.

Originally Posted by daven

if you're seeing 20% of flops then your play is already pretty loose, definitely don't try and play any looser. In fact, best thing to do would be look at aokorongly's starting hand chart and play that for a while - learn to play TightAggressive = something like 14-12 pre-flop

no offense to aok, but his "19" is not TAG. he even tells you so. its nit-rockish. he says its a "place for beginners to start." and, that you SHOULD open up as you gain experience and move up. "19" is for uber-micros and pre-UIGEA. back when party poker was a complete fish farm. and, its certainly not a 6max strategy. if you strictly adhere to his strategy, you will run about 10/7 ish. 19/169 is only 11% anyway, and you dont play ALL 19 evertime you are dealt them from every position or to any raise. so, you wont run even 11% vpip.

dont get me wrong, aok will forget more about poker than i may ever learn, but even he admitted he had to "change" his strategy to adapt to an evolving game. he still uses his "19," but only to promote its use for his published works. or, at least thats what i got out of his recent posts.

I'm pretty sure that AoK's 19 hand strat would still beat micro stakes on stars. Though i agree it is uber tight.

Originally Posted by nickthefool

I'm pretty sure that AoK's 19 hand strat would still beat micro stakes on stars. Though i agree it is uber tight.

it would, no doubt. i wasnt saying it wouldnt. i was only saying its not standard TAG. its way tighter than i think of when i think "TAG."

Originally Posted by Chopper

no offense to aok, but his "19" is not TAG. he even tells you so. .

you speak sense, and you're right.
I think that most players who want to be TAG are generally loose passive. So if they read through the ideas behind the 19hands approach, they may realise that KTo is not worth limping from UTG, and may end up tightening up enough that they may eventually become TAG. I consider between 13-10 and 17-14 as TAG, assuming decent flop aggression...

I think that most players who want to be TAG are generally loose passive.

wow, are they confused, then. lol. that thought never crossed my mind. i always figured they just never read anything. and, it was the "nits" that thought they were TAG because they know where a fold button is...and know how to raise when they have TPTK beat.