Hi guys, basically i am half way thru watching brymstar's SSNL series on cardrunners. I am currently hovering between 50NL and 100NL depending on bankroll requirements.

My question is will following Brymstar's guidance still be enough to be a comfortable winner at 50NL and 100NL? Because when i first moved up to 100NL i felt it necessary to start 3 and 4-betting far more regularly from the button and the blinds. I find the games have got tougher since Brymstars video and was thinking whether i should still be playing 16/14 like suggested or whether now these stats are slightly too tight to be profitable particularly at 100NL

Would appreciate your thoughts.

Thanks

the games have changed a great deal since the series first came out. i'm sure you'll be able to get by playing 16/14, but you'll make more money opening up your game and playing your opponents much more than your cards. this will become more and more evident as you move up in stakes.

Hi juni,
You're certainly correct that the games have changed tremendously since back when I made the series (Spring'07). The average player is more aggressive, there are tons more regulars, and people just generally play better overall.

That said, think a solid/TAG style with a VPIP between [18-15] & PFR in the range of [16-13] will still show a solid profit if you play well. The games have gotten tougher, yes, but the worst possible adjustment you could make when facing stronger players is playing too many hands yourself. People have become far too overly aggressive in general -- even at the stakes you currently play -- and many of them don't understand why they're 3- or 4-betting in most spots. I'm not saying you shouldn't be 3- and 4-betting at all, but you can be a very solid/consistent winner in the games without doing it to excess. And when you do make these plays, do them for a specific purpose, not just because you saw CTS do it in a video so "obv it must be right".

One thing I ask my students who play a lot of marginal hands (even raising something like Q6s OTB) is what they're trying to accomplish by playing their hand. More often than not, they won't have an answer, to which I remind them that we're playing a cash game -- not a tournament -- and that our profit doesn't come from stealing the blinds. Keep that in mind. I should also note that there are plenty of winners at games up to 5/10NL who play ~18/16.

So, in short, playing solid/TAG as my SSNL series suggests is (and always will be) a solid winning strategy.

I have to disagree with this explanation. There could be other reasons not to raise Q6s OTB, such as a player's inexperience leading to reverse implied odds postflop. However, the distinction of tournament vs cash game is not a good way to put it. Stealing the blinds is indeed worth more relative to our stack when we're 25 BB's deep rather than 100 BB's deep. Nevertheless, winning small pots can comprise a big part of our winrate in cash as well.

Refer to Theory of Poker - poker is a battle for the antes and blinds!

From a purely game theory-centric POV, you're entirely correct. But in the real world where we don't play perfectly every hand, I advise keeping yourself out of troublesome situations. While it may be slightly +EV in a vacuum to open some hands from some positions, I argue that your true winrate will often be higher by removing those hands from your game simply because you'll make fewer mistakes later on when the pot is big.

...and I'm all for giving up a small edge preflop (where the bet sizes are small) to avoid making costly mistakes on later streets when the pot is much bigger. Do you not agree?

Ok thanks guys appreciate the feedback and i will try to play TAG as shown in the videos and avoid tricky spots post flop.

Yesterday I watched the first 2 parts for Brystmar's SSNL series (the flash version) and I had some annoying sound interruptions. Do you have these sound interruptions as well, or is it just a singular problem?

I'd call 18-15/16-13 nitty, not TAG. Playing a nitty style is fine; you reduce your variance, you can usually play more tables which can potentially increase your immediate hourly, you avoid a lot of tricky situations.

However, you're most likely limiting your development and reducing your future hourly. I remember spending at least a week straight thinking about the best way to play something like 87s on a Q74 flop with initiative both in an out of position. A nitty player won't come into contact with that situation very often and may not even think about it. When your toughest decision is how much to cbet with AA on A83r you're going to struggle to improve.

And there's loads of reasons to open something like Q6s otb.
1. We can win the blinds. Anybody who doesn't view blinds as important doesn't understand much about poker theory.
2. We can play a pot in position with initiative, how great is that?
3. The main reason is that we generate action for our big hands. If we always have a big hand we're going to get very little action against competent players. Why do you think people open SCs from early position? It's usually a breakeven or maybe even slightly negative EV play, however the little amount we lose from opening SCs is vastly compensated by the extra money we win postflop when we have an overpair or set.

Just because your students can't tell you why they're doing it, doesn't make it wrong. Doing it and understanding why > doing it and not understanding why > not doing it at all.

Players may not understand why they're moving towards a more aggressive style but a move towards more aggression is nearly always going to be bad. Optimal play is far more aggressive then most people assume and it's likely all those players have moved closer to an optimal style of play.

Finally, just because something is a winning style doesn't mean they couldn't be making far more playing a different style. Every time you 3bet light with 77 or KJs you'll win the pot most (like 60 - 70%) of the time, you'll pick it up with a cbet a decent amount, you'll sometimes even make the best hand. That doesn't make your play good and it certainly doesn't mean you couldn't have made more by using a better strategy. It's just another, slightly more sophisticated, form of results orientated thinking.

Re: the 3bet wars. Do you not think flatting in position can often be a better option these days? To me, it seems that most regs have a fairly good idea of how to play preflop and there's very little edge to be gained when you're 3betting in position if their 4bet bluff frequencies are good. Ranges become narrow, SPR becomes smaller thus reducing your positional advantage and it basically just becomes a variance fest. Intuitively, it seems to me that flatting a very wide range in position and playing with deeper SPRs allows for your opponent to make much more serious errors than they will in 3bet pots.

Well, for one, you open yourself up to getting squeezed more.

I think it all boils down to getting inside your opponent's head, table image and dynamics, and how you balance your range. Some players spew in 3 bet pots by calling two many marginal hands, others are horrible post flop oop, blinds might allow you to steal and be weak-tight when calling, allowing you to cbet to take down small pots over and over. And you might be facing a solid postflop player, where making bigger bets might force them to throw away showdown worthy hands that are good, but can not take the heat and does not allow them to outplay you, which makes them adjust to a style out of their comfort zone. I believe to really increase your winrate, adjusting to each particular player and knowing their strengths/weakness, instead of playing 1 specific style will make you more difficult to play with and will give you the ability to exploit villan's weaknesses for more profit.

Good, so flat more with hands like TT and rejam over habitual squeezers.

My point is that playing super laggy isn't even close to being a requirement for a big winner in just about any game -- even up to 25/50NL. Call 18/16 what you will -- TAG, nitty, whatever -- but I honestly believe it's one of the most profitable styles to play these days. That's not to say there's no merit in playing a more LAG style (because there clearly is), but the OP's question was if it was necessary to learn a style of this sort in order to be able to beat games at & above 100NL. And the answer is most definitely NO!

As you continue to improve and are progressive more able to exploit your opponents' weaknesses, upping your VPIP will certianly improve your winrate to an extent, but it won't be a dramatic increase. I still advise my students to avoid troublesome spots against good players at the expense of very small edges though, and you're not gonna be able to change my mind about this.

And for the record, I typically play a ~24/21 game when I play 2/4 - 5/10NL, and ~31/22 at 2/4 - 10/20PLO.

I understand poker theory quite well, tyvm, and I've had quite good success in multiple disciplines of poker to prove it. The Sklansky quote above regarding action in poker as being derived from the attempt of stealing the blinds & antes is much more applicable to limit games such as LHE and stud than NLH or PLO, where the ratio of blinds to potsize is often considerably smaller than in limit games.

That's not to say that it isn't important to steal the blinds/antes in NLH, but it's not nearly as important in this game as it is in LHE or stud. And this is especially true if you make massively costly errors in your attempt to steal the blinds due to sub-optimal play. And who among us isn't suceptible to imperfect play?

It's awesome, no argument here!
Today's games are filled to the brim with over-aggressive players who are itching for a reason to disbelieve the hand(s) you are trying to represent. By removing the random garbage-y hands from our LP opening range, our entire range becomes stronger. And given the frequency with which the typically LAG players in today's higher stakes games resteal on LP openers, I would argue that strengthening our LP opening range does considerably more good than bad.

By doing this, we reduce both the number of times we open for 3BB then fold to a reraise and we increase the frequency we open and then profitably 4-bet (either as a bluff or for value). Trust me, you'll have no problem getting paid off on your big hands in most of today's games, especially if you have an aggressive image overall -- regardless of preflop VPIP.

This stuff might not all apply to SSNL since I haven't played those games in awhile, but I'm 100% certain that playing LAG (or even anything above 16/14) isn't even remotely close to being a "requirement" for winning at 100NL. /end

Some awesome strategy discussion here, thanks guys
I'd add that playing LAGgy is probably one of the best ways for a beginner to go broke quickly.

Wow i thought u guys were talking FR

I agree, I never said it was.

It's a profitable style, it doesn't make it the most profitable. Take two players of equal skill, if a hand is profitable to open for them (and people who play 18/16 are folding lots of profitable hands) then the player who opens it, with all other things being equal, will have a higher winrate. There are of course merits to not opening profitable hands which I've already mentioned like reducing variance and being able to get in more tables/hands.

And I also contend that the looser of the two equally skilled players will improve significantly faster then the tighter player. Playing a nitty style limits yourself and, even though there are plenty of good players with a nitty style, I believe they'd have a higher winrate if they added in more profitable hands.

Just because it's more relevant in other disciplines doesn't mean it's not extremely important in NLHE as well.

It must be about 2 years now since Pokey wrote that thread about stealing blinds, it's not exactly groundbreaking any more, it's accepted as fact that stealing blinds and playing lots of hands on the button is very profitable.

I prefer to get better then to avoid awkward (but profitable) situations altogether. It would be great if we could do both but if you're never in the situations you're not going to get better at them.

We reduce the frequency we open and fold to a reraise but we definitely don't increase the frequency we open and then profitably 4bet, in fact it's exactly the opposite. A looser player will get 3bet wider and hence be able to get a wider range in for value. Because of this wider value range he's able to have a wider bluffing range.

I'm sure some players would still pay off an 18/16 player's big hands, that's a mistake they make. However, the 18/16 player is passing up the opportunity to play loads of pots with fish just to exploit a small mistake regulars sometimes make.