How to combat a loose table?
 

My initial thoughts are to tighten up and get aggressive, but I feel tempted to take some shots with late suited connectors. What Im seeing though is my variance skyrocket and im unable to shake some of the draws off. Is it better to tighten up or take some shots you normally wouldnt?

say what?

Ok, it took me about 5 reads and I finally realized you're talking about poker.

Carry on.

Most advanced poker books will tell you to lightly lean into the table (i.e. loosen up a little bit).

I was gonna suggest a deck of playing cards under the leg. I guess the playing cards was on the right topic as the question though.

Totally depends on your chip stack and the current blind level. When a table is loose and you have a bunch of chips, I believe its best to play tight, because its hard to bluff a dumb loose player, and on pots were you have or flop the best hand they will most likely pay you off. That being said if the blinds are small compared to my stack I will try to get into extra pots for cheap if a I can, but you have to be able to lay down medicore hands when you hit them and there is betting. If I am short at a loose table I will generally wait for an above average hand and just move in, Donkeys can't wait to call a percent of there chips all-in vs a small stack with garbage hands usually.

Karate chop?

You have to separate loose aggressive from loose passive. Is there a ton of raising and multiple people seeing every flop for a good sized raise? In that case, you need to tighten up and be prepared to take most hands you enter the pot with all the way. Limping early with aces or kings and pushing over a raise becomes a very good play, and strong re-raises with top hands in other positions should get a lot of money in the pot. You know these guys are playing huge hand ranges so your premium hands are way ahead of the calling ranges you'll see here.


If its loose passive, lots of people just limping to see a flop, then you definitely want to get involved with small pairs and suited connectors more often, and you probably want to limp in with a lot more hands in late position than you normally would. That assumes, of course, that big hands are getting paid off. If you flop a set or hit a straight or a flush, will top pair pay it off? One warning to that is that you still need solid implied odds. Harrington has a recommendation here that I can't remember off the top of my head, something like "the stack sizes need to be such that you can expect to win at least 30 BB when you hit your hand" so once the blinds start going up this becomes less viable. 30BB may not be the right number there, I'll try to remember to check later tonight. Also with tons of limpers and lots of passive calling, you want to raise more pre-flop with your good hands. If the blinds are 10/20 and 4 people limp in and you have KK, you probably want to be raising it up to 160-200 or so. You'd love to just get one caller, not raising enough and having all the limpers call you makes your hand really difficult to play.

How about your stool, is that loose too?

apologies, couldn't resist...

that was a reach dawg

BTW this is .50/1 cash games

In a cash game you are, I feel, much more likely to see the second situation Radii talked about (loose passive) and his advice there is excellent and makes me a winner at those stakes, though I will add that online people often don't have deep stacks and so you would then want to tighten up to try and bust them when you get a premium hand.

i have a guy at the table who has seen the flop over 85% of the time, goes to river 75%, and is up $235!!!!

I keep hearing Yoda's voice when I start reading that post.

follow that guy anywhere he goes

Seriously. Are you on stars? If so please post on here when he's on. I could use some money as I do other work.

Yep, no offense intended. I plead temporary insanity by way of not enough sleep...

barwetz is the guy



let me know who you all are ;)


today has been a tough day for me pokerwise. Down quite a bit off of a couple of his runouts.

heck i dont even play anymore. if i ever do again i will be Gorgonian on most sites or MJ4H on the rest. probably wont though cause i cant stand the aggravation.

useless trivia:

at the final tableon poker stars with the chip lead..

dola,

won my first multi-table sit-n-go

Congrats, donkey!

Is this the parody thread?

welp i'm pretty much all in