Making a First Impression

Hello everyone. I'm new to the site and this is my first post. I've been playing for only a few months online and at home games. I usually play $10NL tables.

Here's my question. Lately, I find that I'm often sitting tables that are pretty tight. I'm also a reasonable tight player and I usually only come in with good hands and fold 70% of the time.

Would anyone recommend LOSING the first hand you play on PURPOSE to hide my game? Suppose you sit down start chatting a litte. Fold your first two or three hands while complimenting the largest stack holder, asking someone about thier hometown, and just generally making yourself conspicuous. Then call a nice 3x bet with J4o and just call down any reasonable bet. Hopefully you hit a J or 4 and even raise a little. You show your losing hand and terrible starting cards for maybe 10-12xBB ($2.50 at the $10 table).

Does anyone think making a wrong first impression would earn you extra bets later on? Or is it just a waste of my BR?

waste.

thats just my opinion

My guess is it's not worth the effort. Here's my "in theory" response (ie, probably not effective in real life.)

I think what will get noticed a lot more is not your first few hands, but if you put a horrible whomping bad beat on someone. You want a showdown, you want to river someone. The trouble is, it is not really all that easy to put a bad beat on someone, even if you try with all your might. It takes luck.

Slightly more subtle crappy play will get noticed but only after a bunch of hands. Say, you've got J4 offsuit and call a minor preflop raise. Flop comes up J46. Some dude hits top pair and bets into you, then you call all the way down. Basically, a crappy play all around, from preflop to post flop.... the point being to lose all respect from the good players at the table. So, they'll want to play at your table but they won't have a clue of how to read you, and will resign to that fact.

I personally have never played like this. hahaha Probably not worth even trying. Although it might be fun messing around, it could be incredibly wasteful.

I only say this because I usually don't care about the first few hands of a new player at the table, I watch more for trends in aggression.

You are wasting money

Especially at the micro limits and even smaller limits it is a bad idea -- nobody is paying attention. It's not worth it at all.

I make enough marginal or slightly -EV plays that no one at the table likely understands which make for g00t enough advertising.

Thanks for everyone's replies. I won't be trying a move like this anytime soon. 8-)

Live, at a table where you might spend many hours with the same players there might be some value to this (but likely not much).

Online ... Forgettaboutit!

I tried this online once when I first started playing. Ten minutes later, 60% of the players had left, 40 mins later the whole table was fresh. So, I wasted money on re-imagining and the only people who knew were gone.

One thing people forget about creating a weak, loose or fishy image is that it can betray you later.

If you are in fact a good player, you want people to respect your play and your bets, and you 'should" make more money off that image than by pretending to be a fish. This is especialy true in NL, were the big decision often comes down to "who" you are playing.

For example, you have JJ and you call an all-in from a weak player with 70% of your stack. But, you get another caller behind you who thinks you and the original all-in are both full of it, and he has the stack to make the call with 40% of his chips (The 1st guy has K-Js and the big stack behind you makes a call with AQos) How do you like your Jacks now?? How do like the fact that post flop, the big stack can bring you all in for the rest of your chips??

If you had a strong image don't you think big-stack would have folded (or at least been more likely to respect your call)?

Remember, if you want to be seen as a fish, don't complain when you get the very kind of action that a fish is supposed to get.

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Make a huge reraise and get fucked when he's holding the nuts and knows it. (Sometimes)

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One of my preferred tactics is the make the bet look like you're reeling them in to pay more for the turn and then slam it down on the turn.

At my limits I just have to hope the turn isn't an A and I'm up against an AXER who won't let go.

Originally Posted by Ripptyde

stay tuned for my mega post on why all the scared little kitties are doomed to mediocrity

but we're all politically correct weak-tighties.

Well....here is my take on it for what it is worth. I've been playing online for about 6 months. Have not made any comments on this forum as I feel I am still very much in the learning stage. Read all the articles on FTP about hand value, what to play and not play. Have played tight all this time. After reading many comments here on the forum I decided to try Rip's strategy. Last night I basically played just about every hand. Playing on the $25.00 NL tables (.25/.50 blinds) I was down about $75. I was getting a lot of comments about how stupid I was playing and I encouraged those comments. People were definitely noticing that I was playing rags. One guy was even trying to help me manage my money by telling me how much I lost. Well.....long story short, I got back my $75 and another $180. Reason.....after a while they did not have a clue as to what I was playing....rag or nuts. Not only that, it was much more enjoyable than what I've been doing which is play Level 1,2 or 3 hands (and very few of those if the cards are not coming). Is it risky....absolutely. But in my tight style I did not get the action and big pots that I got last night. By the way.....the guy who was trying to help me manage my money....I took $50 from him and the whole time he's telling me I don't know what I'm doing. I kept agreeing with him. I'll try this strategy a little more and try to refine it. But all I've got to say is......thanks Rip! You opened my eyes a little.

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