Originally Posted by mpethybridge
Your thinking on this is a bit muddled.
1. For the VAST majority of players, and here I mean probably 99.5%, playing Lag is no more profitable than Tag. I exploded the "lag is more profitable" myth back in 2009 or so. The simple fact is that the very real collection of theoretical marginal advantages you gain from playing a lag style are swallowed up in the mistakes mere mortals make in executing the style, or, for that matter, that they make executing the basics of a Tag style.
Phrased differently, if you add 4 hands to your starting range, you'd be doing well for two of them to be winners and two of them losers, and for them to basically offset one another, leaving your WR unchanged.
2. The profitability of your starting hands depends on your marginal skill edge. Back when I was playing online, we used to demonstrate this with fun we called a "100% VPIP challenge." We'd drop down in stakes and play every hand. When I was playing .50/1.00, I dropped down to the .02/.05 games and played 5000 hands, putting preflop money in on every one, and achieved a win rate of around 6 or 7 bb/100 hands. If I had tried that in my normal game I would have gone busto, rather than won.
The point is that J8s isn't a profitable or unprofitable hand. I play it often enough in a live 1/2 game that I'm certain it's making me a tiny amount of money. Maybe a quarter on average each time I play it. But if I tried to play it in a 5/10 game against better opponents, it would lose me a decent amount of money.
OK, you see the point: your skill edge isn't that you play more hands, your skill edge allows you to play more hands. In other words, your opening range should be proportional to the size of your skill edge. You can't just make more money by playing more hands. Lag style depends on your ability to make smaller mistakes than your opponents. Basically, you're using skill edge to subsidize hand strength. In order to do that, you need surplus skill edge.
2. Lag style isn't radically different than Tag style. They slide into each other. Back in the heyday of online, it was conventional to refer to someone in a full ring game playing 12% of hands and 9% for a raise as a nit, someone at 15% and 12% as a tag, and someone playing 18% and 15% as a lag (These numbers slid over time toward higher numbers as the cool kids all tried to play lag).
So think about that. The difference between a tag and a lag started out as the difference in how you played 3 or 4% of your hands. The differences were pretty subtle: you steal 50% from the button instead of a taggy 40%, you steal 40% from the cutoff, and you 3 bet a few more percent than a tag, and, presto, you're a lag. It's not, look at me, I'm opening 54s from UTG and then triple barreling nits because I'm cool." That's not lag, that's just dumb. It's just being able to find a few more spots than a tag.
3. Which suggests the way to move from tag to lag is to evolve. If you can profitably 3 bet k9s OTB, then you can probably also 3 bet K8s. If you can profitably open 40% OTB, then you can probably up that to 50%. If you can profitably iso with ATo, then you can probably also iso KTo. Etc. Once you're isolating with KTO with confidence, you'll see an occasional spot where K9o looks good enough. Etc.
4. The goal isn't to be playing a certain style, although at least 9 of 10 lags play lag only to stroke their ego, and have introduced as many leaks into their game as they have new profits, and could switch to ABC tomorrow and see no change in their WR. The goal is to have a clear idea of your skills, your opponents' tendencies to make mistakes, and to not miss any opportunities to profit from that margin.
As you begin to understand your skill edge better, and as you work to improve your skills, your opening range should naturally open. It's as simple as seeing someone limp Q8o in MP, and then, when he limps again in MP, and you're behind him with K8, going "this is trash, but it's better than his trash," and raising instead of folding. Repeated 7 or 8 times a session, it's what really makes the difference between a skilled lag and a skilled tag.
5. What you are seeing in your donk ing off stacks when you try to open up is the simple reality that your skill edge is not big enough for you to be playing marginal hands. You are making big mistakes that are wiping out the theoretical advantages of opening more hands. It is a reminder that playing Lag before mastering tag is a losing proposition. (Yes, lots of people do it; they are playing poker with their dicks, rather than their brains).
6. Truthfully, playing Lag at low stakes makes no sense. If you have such a huge skill edge at 1/2 that you can play lag more profitably than tag, then you could make even more by moving up to 2/5 and reverting to tag play. Granted, there may be rare instances where a player is stuck grinding a game where his lag style really is more profitable than tag. But most players who really could pull more profit from 1/3 or 2/5 as a lag than as a tag really ought to just be moving up as a tag.
When you're in the biggest game you have access to, and you have a giant edge, it makes sense to be opening up. But not before that.
6. Played correctly, lag style is less prone to variance than Tag style. The reason for this is simple: lags make a much higher proportion of their profits from nonshowdown winnings than tags. Think of it this way: suppose a Tag playing 1/2 is up $200 on the session. Then, 7.5 hours in, he gets AIPF with AA and gets cracked. He's at $0 for the session. 3 hands later, it's limped to him in the hj, he has K8 and folds. Now suppose the exact same thing for the lag, but instead of folding, he raises to iso, it works, and he wins $12. The Tag finishes at $0, and the Lag finishes at +$12, because he is less reliant than the tag for his profits on winning at showdown. Those $12 wins buffer and smooth out the effects of variance.
Hope this helped you clarify your thinking.
