The Nit Clinic
Many readers of Micro Full-Ring struggle with beating uNL or do not beat their game at a good win-rate. Often it is difficult to make sense of some of the 2+2 principles or difficult to apply it at the tables. Some even believe that the games are too tough to beat at a good rate or that those that do are just players on the path to small and midstakes anyway.
Also much advice given suggest Slightly loose Tight aggressive game or outright Loose Aggressive game styles. But given that alot of you guys are either not good enough post-flop or you likely misapply Preflop some of the ideas presented in uNL - I have decided to present some ideas around playing a Nitty TAG style to get you beating the games you play in.

The first image - is an example of 50NL full-ring employing a 10.5 VPIP/ 8.5 PFR/ AF 2.
This was achieved by me - playing ~1000 hands per hour mass tabling.
Given that I have played 6 tables for similiar periods and achieved 10pt+.
So as you can see by the win-rate and the amount of tables - for those of you playing less tables or a lower level - achieving a 4-5ptbb winrate is certainly realistic for each of you. And more importantly you do not have to play a very wide range and be a great hand reader.




The 3 Golden rules of uNL
1. Do Not Bluff - Within the ~25k of hands that I played in this sample. More than 90% of the time I did bluff I was called and lost. Whether it was against a losing recreational player or against a regular.
2. When Villian raises fold - more than 90% of the time that I called a raise I lost. The later in the hand villian raise and I called the more likely I was to lose. So whenever villian raises and I did not have a nut hand I was losing money.
3. When you Have a 'nut' Hand Bet large - it is very important when you hit a big hand that the size of your pots with big hands are large. For the same reason that we do not bluff i.e. villian calls 90% of the time - we should be betting large when we do hit. Also we need our big hands to have big pots to counter the times when we get outdrawn or when we get coolered - so the worst of worlds is we get medium pots when we have the nuts but villian get stacks when he has the nuts.

The 3 Pillars Of Poker.
1. Skill Advantage
2. Hand strength
3. Position

Whilst alot of 2+2ers will disagree, for uNL the 3 Pillars of Poker in order of importance for you will be as listed above.

1. Skill Advantage - the reason why this is the most important Pillar of uNL is the greater your skill advantage the greater your Expected Value (EV) will be in any pot. Now, of course the mathematics of Poker will mean sometimes even a chimp will beat you, but your first and most important decision before playing a hand will be do I want to play a hand vs this villian. In practical terms, you goal should be to play more hands where you have a clear advantage over your opponent than hands you don't.
2. Hand Strength - This is the second most important advantage because of the undeniable and irresitable fact that most poker players love to call. What that means is that a majority of hands that see a flop @uNL will reach showdown. So having a mathematical advantage to begin with is an imperative if villian is likely to call you and you are likely have to showdown your hand.
3. Position - Position is so important for so many reasons. But the simplest way to think about it in uNL is you will get to choose who you are playing the pot with more often as well as you will get to choose when to add money to the pot correctly more often.

The 3 reasons to Bet.
1. Value Bet - To place a bet to get a worse hand to call
2. Collect Dead Money - It is unclear whether you have the best hand or not but you bet to get worse hands to fold. Most often this is as Preflop Raiser (PFR) when the action is checked to you i.e. a continuation bet.
e.g. You hold 99 on K23 board.
3. Bluff - to get a better hand to fold.

The reason for repeating 2+2 mantra immediately above is to remind those that are new of our guiding principles and also to provide me with a chance to emphasise how important it is to READ THE STICKIED THREADS.
But with all that in mind - but particularly the 3 Pillars of Poker - the discussion should then be on when to play and what.

Now the images below are provided by Pokerstove, a free program - which you need to stop and download right now.
Within these images are a range in descending order of Early position, mid position and Late position starting hand guides.
Now the principle reason most every strategy post on 2+2 does not have a starting hand guide - is because every coach or contributor to 2+2 wants you to think whilst you play and not to think that a boilerplate approach to poker is feasible.
The reason I have provided you with this hand guide is to give you some idea of what a winning Nitty TAG uNL player plays in various positions.
As you will notice the amount of hands in EP is only the top 5% of hands.
The reason I have choosen those hand is because
(a) You will be almost never choosing who you are playing against. So you will not get to choose how much of a skill advantage you have.
(b) 80+% of the time you will be playing out of position
(c) With (a) and (b) combined you will need to rely more on Hand strength here than at any other time.
(d) The likelihood of someone having a better hand is at its highest



Of course as more people limp, raise or fold in front of us - the more likely we get to choose who we are playing against as well as the more likely we are to be in position when we do get to play. Additionally the likelihood that a better hand behind us or a player we dont want to play against chooses to play.



In late position cutoff and BTN - we are either one player away or are guaranteed position and likely to be playing against people who do not get to choose their holdings before they bet i.e. the blinds.



That is my Preface.
My next comprehensive post will be on
Why you should start with this Nitty hand range?
How to think like a good Nit and not be too weak-tight?
Where the money is at?
And related topics.

1st? I hope so. Very nice post.

The only thing I disagree is playing K2s to ~K8s from the CO. This is not nitty but laggy. I am 14/12 and I do not play them.

The rest is a very good starting hand guide.

Thanks for the information. Looking forward to more.

Some guiding principles of Nithood

*Some of the advice contained will not be that which has the highest EV and could be rightly considered leaks.*

Given that our most important pillar of uNL is skill advantage - we shall treat our holdings differently vs fish than vs regulars.
Versus any given hand range their is a couple of ways of measuring the profitability of the way we played a hand.
- There will be the most +EV route of extracting value.
- There will be a comparative measure of if positions/holdings were reversed would we have made more money than our opponent
- If both hole cards were displayed would we have won or lost more money playing the hand face up than we did.

So we know that we will make alot of mistakes Preflop and postflop.
We also know that villian will be making mistakes PF and PostF.

So.
Principle 1 - Make less and smaller mistakes than villian.

Which bring us to differentiating between Bad players and regulars.
We should be more inclined to play bigger pots with bad players than versus regulars. Which is to say that what we considered to be the 'nuts' will change depending upon who we are playing against.

So.
Principle 2 Of Big hand Big pot and small hand small pot.
Should be amended to include the filter of what consitutes a big hand vs a bad player is different to what is a big hand versus a regular.
With the qualification that villian has not raised at any stage in the hand but is calling then....

Vs a Fish QQ+ and TPTK with a rank of Q or above on all undercard boards should be considered the nuts. The more coordinated the board and the closer the top rank of card is to the Q - the less inclined you should be getting stacks in versus the villian. Clearly Two Pair, sets and str8s on non flushing or 4 consequtive boards should also be considered nut hands. Flushes should be considered in a separate category because of the likelihood of villian playing for flushes is very high. So Kx or Ax flushes should be stacked off with always on 3 flushing boards but you should moderate your behaviour with 10s flushes and below.
As the hand develops the more coordinated the board the more inclined you should be to control the size of the pot with your Overpairs, conversely the more coordinated the turn the more inclined you should be to build the pot with your nut hands bearing in mind relative hand strength and ALWAYS assuming villian does not show any interest.

Vs Regulars AA is still the nuts whilst ever villian shows no interest in the pot.
You should however have as a rule a general inclination to pot control on scare cards or as the board develops particularly OOP. The tighter the regular the tighter your stack off range should be particularly if villian calls both the flop and the turn. When barrelling regulars with vulnerable non nut hands always have more than one type of hand that he will be willing to call with - the drier the board the less inclined you should be to be building massive pots.... the reason being that they tend not to make as many big mistakes and worse over PPs are combinatorically a small part of any range to begin with. And most regulars are playing their holdings to beat AA - so unless there are alot of hands he can call with worse we should as a rule proceed with caution.

Having said that regulars are far more comfortable betting than calling.

Which leads to Principle 3
Smaller and fewer pots vs regulars than fish

So what will distinguish you from the Standard TAG and will be a leak if you play SSNL + will be you will exercise slightly too much pot control vs regulars and you will likely be too fit or fold in general.
But given our goal is to get you winning in the first place we will be concentrating on first not paying off fish, secondly making fish pay us off - and if we do play pots with regulars we will work on the idea that regulars are more likely to make mistakes in small pots than in big pots.

Principle 4
When holding the mortal nuts on the river - when in doubt Shove.

Most every player you play @ uNL most common leak is too call too much.
The range between his calling a 3/4PSB vs a shove is more often not much.
The mathematics of EV means that more often than not the shove is the most +EV way and the worse the player the more inclined you should be to shove.
Given you will not win as many pots as a LAG or Standard TAG when you do chance upon the nuts make sure if villian wants to call you make him pay the full price. Which is another reason why shove bluffing does not seem to work.

To summarise this post.
We make money off bad players.
The worse the players the more inclined we should be to play a pot with them.
The worse they are the more inclined we should be to play a big pot with them.
Big pots with bad players
Small pots with good players
Big pots with big hands
Small pots with small hands.

Oh, please continue Master of the Nits! (as term of endearment and not of degradation)

Also please include what villians to target? And recommended bankroll management of a Nit (i.e. buyin amount, leaving stack size, bankroll, etc)?

EP Hand range: Tight is good.

Lets look at some numbers.
We will assume that villian is a regular in your game.
We are raising UTG.
Take out Pokerstove and have a look at the equity of our range vs his range. You might want to add in hands or take out hands but the exercise is important to get a picture in your head of what you are playing against.
So let us not do our EP range ascribed in Original post but go even tighter.

TT+,AQs+,AKo

If we are playing against a tight, competent regular who call us in Mid position.

22+,AJs+,KJs+,QJs,JTs,T9s,AQo+

We leave in AA and KK.
62% of the time we win.
38% of the time villian wins.

For $1.00 place into the we make 24c in the dollar.

So even vs the tight competent villian we are a strong 60/40 favourite with our range.
With the assumption that both hands go to showdown.

You can see that 24c as compensation for being OOP and having as small a skill edge as likely at your game.


Vs a very loose passive player in Late position

TT+,AQs+,AKo vs

22+,A2s+,K2s+,Q2s+,J2s+,T2s+,92s+,82s+,72s+,62s+,5 2s+,42s+,32s,A2o+

70 % vs 30 %

So for every $1.00 invested we will make 40c in that dollar.


So if we know that most hands that see flops go to showdown. We can see that we will make on avg 24c vs the regular but 40c vs the fish.
So even if they make the same types and size of mistakes post flop - which is not true the fish will make more and bigger mistakes - on average we will make 60% more off the fish based off of equity alone from our EP range.


Get out pokerstove manipulate the ranges vs TT+,AQs+,AKo. Get a picture in your mind when you are called what types of range you are playing against.

Given the Hand strength EV advantage - do you see why we don't need to bluff and even less so vs the fish? Even if everytime we have AK we whiff OOP we will still make more than enough money from our other holdings.

great post

what i miss is something you almost wrote down:
something like: as a nit i want to go broke on the flop with: set, TPTK, etc.

as it was one of the biggest problem i had when i started to play nl2. when to stack off and when not

EP Hand Range Equity

So we continue with our look at our Hand range vs Vanilla Regular in Mid position and Vanilla Fish.
As most of you lament, of course incorrectly, when you do open UTG you get more than one caller.

So lets look at our Hand strength equity vs two separate opponents.
Again we have
TT+,AQs+,AKo
vs Regular
22+,AJs+,KJs+,QJs,JTs,T9s,AQo+
& vs Fish
22+,A2s+,K2s+,Q2s+,J2s+,T2s+,92s+,82s+,72s+,62s+,5 2s+,42s+,32s,A2o+

The equity distribution is
47.913%
30.210%
21.8%

So we open for 4bb we get two callers - add the 1.5bb from the blinds.

We all are investing 30.7% equity.
We see that the fish is making a mistake. The regular is making a small mistake/Breakeven proposition.

Our invested equity is 30.7% but our hand equity is 48% or = 6.5bb


So our tight range has enabled us to be making a theoretical profit each time this occurs. But as we know intuitively because we are OOP and our equity vs the combined ranges of villians we are a slight dog. So at least in principle we should be looking at not putting more money into the pot unless our hand improves.
We can do this relatively profitability given some more principles of uNL poker.

1. Most uNL players are passive.
2. Most uNL will not bluff us
3. Most uNL players want to see showdown.

So my suggestion to you is this. Even though it will have less Expected Value than another approach. If you never c-bet AK OOP multiway - you will still have a positive expectation from your EP range and even still from AK itself.

An example.
Your Holding AK

Flop is 332

If you c-bet and get a fold from both players - it is likely that there holdings were unpaired, unsuited cards with no draws.
i.e. we were getting worse hands to fold.
Now we can actually c-bet this flop and expect a good amount of folds, in fact so many folds that it will be very +EV.
But here is the rub to being a nit and Not a TAG. I want you not to do this on the precautionary principle that your skill edge is not enough vs their combined range OOP with the nut nothing.
So we are making a mistake here - so that we can keep your mistakes small and prevent you from making larger mistakes later.
Our compensation will be that villian will be unlikely to bet without some part of the board.

Nit Principle 1.
Do not c-bet AK Out of position vs two or more opponents

* Note - this is not A TAG approach to the game - and the sole purpose of this is to get leakey/spewey or non-winning players to avoid playing OOP with nothing.

Disclaimer
- Most, if not all, concepts are widely available by spending the time and energy reading the Stickied Threads.
- I am a subscriber to DC - and would recommend it to anyone that ask me, although other reputable training sites might equally serve your purposes
- I have never received poker coaching - but have received valuable insight advice from Poker coaches such as Mpethybridge, SplitSuit, Sounded Simple Chargers & AlexB182.
- I have received moral support from Learning Curve, Greggg Rusty Nails and eggpie.
- + I attempt to treat with the respect - this Forum as CMAR would have of all of us.

If any thoughts or ideas expressed here are not adequately sourced or acknowledged - apologies in advanced.

Ok I need to play some hands.
I will be back working through a Nit approach to poker tommorrow.

Great post. Now that I've read it please delete it.

You have one of my my favorite sections of Theory of Poker.

My LP range looks more like this reducing Ks hands and adding more Ao hands. What do you think?

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Also I didn't quite follow you here?

If you c-bet and get a fold from both players - it is likely that there holdings were unpaired, unsuited cards with no draws.
i.e. we were getting worse hands to fold.
Now we can actually c-bet this flop and expect a good amount of folds, in fact so many folds that it will be very +EV.
But here is the rub to being a nit and Not a TAG. I want you not to do this on the precautionary principle that your skill edge is not enough vs their combined range OOP with the nut nothing.
So we are making a mistake here - so that we can keep your mistakes small and prevent you from making larger mistakes later.
Our compensation will be that villian will be unlikely to bet without some part of the board.

So you're suggesting to not c-bet this flop? I will normally c-bet this. 95% of the regs I play will c-bet this if I do not, they will not check it down.( You're saying I will lose more money in the long run if I c-bet as opposed to checking it?)

Excellent post as always DTD

Going to try it out, was already thinking of nitting it up.

Great work here, Digger. King Nit!

I think he means that you will still be +EV by cbetting. By not cbetting you can't make mistakes later on in the hand if they call thus keeping the misstakes small by checking (making the misstake).

Edit: And you will still be +EV by not cbetting unimproved AK hands OOP multiway.

I tip my hat to your effort and workrate digger (especially recently) and a hell of a lot of what you say here is very accurate and addresses a number of mistakes I see uFR making.

I do disagree though on the general consensus of "nitting it up". I'm certainly not one of those people who advoate "cool kid LAG" looseness or aggression has little to do with overall profit, rather the application of these concepts will lead to profit.

Your game should not be thought of as a linear function of NIT-LAG that you tune with a dial to get the optimal frequency. There are times for Ace high calls and there are times for folding sets, I do both and so must you.


I'm 100% serious that at any Full Ring game that if your Attempt to steal is not approaching 50% you are missing out big time.

I thought that was Martin

Great post, thanks for putting in the time to write it.