Yes, I mean soft skills are a real thing. Tilt control, patience, and good post flop play are all tough.

Hi JL:

I had to laugh when I read this. You obviously didn't read the Patricia Cardner/Jonathan Little nonsense about how you need 10,000 hours to become an "elite" player. Of course you're right.

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi spaceman:

Always folding the jacks once it has gone to three bets should impact your results very little. First, your expectation is probably small to begin with and this play will only rarely come up.

The same is somewhat true against a typical early position first in raiser in today's games when you hold AQo. While this play will occur more often than the jacks, not playing it shouldn't cost much. However, once the raiser is in middle or late position, then making this fold (instead of a 3-bet) should become fairly costly.

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi Chasqui:

The main problem with playing too tight is that in short handed games and short handed situations (where the opener is in a late position) it can become very expensive where you're allowing the bettor to have automatic profit just by betting anything. I believe this is the main reason why very tight players don't do as well as they once did due to the aggressive games of today.

Best wishes,
Mason

That's what I meant by the tight player having a hard time winning with a couple of good players at the table. I imagine you mean that even some average LAGs in the game accomplish the same, I agree. I also agree that the tight player's early and middle position opening ranges aren't where most the losses are at.

Hi Chasqui:

As an example, there's a very tight player I know here in LasVegas who is a modest winner and who has told me that he can't win when the game goes short handed. He doesn't understand that his strength in a full ring game is his weakness short handed.

Best wishes,
Mason

I think that making it about full/short ring confuses the issue. Do you think he can win if you take a 6 handed lineup that he loses against and fill up 3 seats with average lags?

Not the point you were making, but your range raises a question in my mind:
Your UTG opening range is about 6% and the same range advocated in Stoxtrader's book, which you publish. But the Newall book, which you also publish, advocates a range of about 10%, specifically 66+, ATs+, KJs+, QJs, JTs, AJo+, and KQo. Why the difference? Live vs. online? Giving up a little +ev to reduce variance? Just a different playing style with not much difference in ev? I'm curious why the difference. Thanks.

Yes. In my opinion this particular player would be a small overall winner if the game was filled up as you suggest.

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi George:

I'm aware of this difference, and even though I think The Intelligent Poker Player by Philip Newall is a great book, I also view this UTG range too loose for the games I play and believe the Sklansky paradox given above is the reason why. Also, in the footnote on page 33 Newall states:

Best wishes,
Mason

[QUOTE=Mason Malmuth;50255673]Hi spaceman:

Always folding the jacks once it has gone to three bets should impact your results very little. First, your expectation is probably small to begin with and this play will only rarely come up.

The same is somewhat true against a typical early position first in raiser in today's games when you hold AQo. While this play will occur more often than the jacks, not playing it shouldn't cost much. However, once the raiser is in middle or late position, then making this fold (instead of a 3-bet) should become fairly costly.

Best wishes,
Mason[/QUOTE

Makes sense, thanks.

I think it makes a big difference whether or not they're losing their own money and whether or not they care about the money. If they aren't the type to go on tilt then I think you could get almost any intelligent person to beat a decent 20/40 game.

My wife went from not knowing a single thing about poker to beating small stakes online pre-black friday in a couple of months. I'd confidently put her into a 20/40 game if I could trick her into thinking she were playing for smaller stakes than she actually is.

i read this and kinda thought "meh, i don't think that really comes up all that much" re: the automatic stuff.

then i read the raise/fold only thread and this immediately came to mind. it really is amazing how your mind can discount what is needed to be known vs. what you personally know in pursuit of a given game. or rather your level of knowledge vis-a-vis the level of knowledge of players of said game on a lower/higher achievement scale.

after that i started thinking about analogies and chess came to mind. i.e. a close analogy would be a 1900-2000 ranked player's knowledge of opening moves and end game strats vs. a 1600-1700 player's knowledge and what the former would take for granted vs. the latter. or the ability of whatever-level-this-becomes-standard-in-chess-studying where the person can play games without the board just by visualizing the entire setup via move announcements (e4 d4; Pxd4 QxP; etc.).

now i'm rambling though and forgot the actual reason i wanted to bring this up. maybe something to do with it actually being harder to win long term than people think and the true "crushers' " data are few and far between? yea i guess let's go w/ that lol.

This is looser than several of the 20/40 props at Bay 101 play and they've been working there for years, so...

Looking at props as examples of how to play is a real dicey proposition. Most only play well enough to survive, not to crush.

But they don't actually have to be winners to make money. If they break even at poker or even lose a few bucks an hour, they're still making money.

How decent is decent postflop? Because that's what it comes down to. There are nits that beat 2/4.

+1

A lots of plays in lhe are simple and just take discipline, but that discipline is hard to come by when your on hour 8 of your session or just lost 3 racks in the last 2 hours.

No, the reason is that WTHG is old and outdated. It's still a great book in many regards, but no expert LHE player is playing that tight preflop. It's probably a good starting point for non experts though.

Nit-Tag will do fine in 20, around breakeven in 40, and get destroyed in 75+. Imo.

Why? I think someone playing like OP preflop other than possibly not playing enough extra hands(though OP's preflop strategy may be better imo as more questionable hands you play the more mistakes that can be made which could lower winrate not increase it) should be able to do well in any limit holdem game. I don't agree you will be exposed and break even or get destroyed in 40 or 75+ by playing the preflop game OP describes. You can't expose and destroy someone playing clean preflop. I think he'd do quite well in fact and be one of the best preflop players in the game as most don't have the discipline to play this solid of a game. A player adding in a looser/extra hands is the more likely person to get destroyed playing limit holdem. I shouldn't say this as i'd prefer opponents to think they need to gamble it up to win but it just isn't accurate imo. There is no way to prove adding in sub par hands is +ev but it is proveable sub par hands will win less often than good hands.

It has to do with the fact that as you move up you will have less and mess losing players at each limit. At 20-40 there may between 5-8 people that have noticeable pre flop leaks. At 1-2 you may hAve 1-2 guys gbling a lot, 1-2 lagging pros that play very well post and 4-5 guys that play same solid pf start as OP but play better post. If you are the 6th best player in the game it's gonna be tough to beat even if your play is still relatively solid

No reason why a TAG with a solid preflop strategy and conservative post flop game cant break even or be a small winner at 40/80. Theyre just not leaking much money.

I think you're adding things into your argument why he will lose at games above 20-40 that don't have anything to do with his original point of "can i win playing this way preflop? Is this a good winning preflop strategy at bigger games or is it too tight/nitty?" I think if you want to disprove what i said you have to prove what is wrong with his preflop play and why he needs to add in hands. Not tell me it doesn't matter how he plays preflop because everyone plays better postflop than him in bigger games so he will lose. One has nothing to do with the other. He wants to know if the preflop strategy is a winning strategy in bigger games. If you want to argue he will lose in bigger games because postflop most will play better i would argue at least he would lose less if he played the solid preflop strategy he describes as opposed to adding in more sub par hands/situations. But again that's not what he's asking about.

Not meaning to come off angry just pointing out doesn't seem you're addressing the real point about if the preflop play is good enough to win in bigger games.

OP clearly describes a player who is on the ABCish side postflop.