Riverman wins this thread now... Although OP isn't a step-by-step how to crush LLLSNL it is sort of an outline of what the pot at the end of the rainbow will look like.

like i said, read the players, and adjust to rocked-up villians by racheting it way down when they limp. (they are trying to trap reckless guy, LOL).
so now youve accomplished one LAG goal = youre getting free cards.
take advantage by adjusting and limping behind w/ the proper stack sizes to cooler them.

you touched on the main goal of a good LAG = to get paid off lighter by ppl who normally wouldnt pay it off. they will hero call you, but no one else.
*profit*

you dont have to give away a ton to accomplish this.

if youre creative about it, you can find really cheap ways to get them to way over-adjust to you.

if youre in a game thats super loose and drunk, then lagging is totally unnessisary, and its foolish to LAG it up in that game, because theyve already made the adjustment that you want them to.
you are simply paying for a product that you already have, and is being offered for free in this case.

thats another thing that ppl miss about LAG play.
the LAG anticipates losing $ with his bad openings.
hes just setting a tone, thats all. hes making an investment in getting inside your head.
and if he's good, and you dont understand what hes up to, it will be worth the investment for him.

if someone trys to make some LAG play, and then expects it to be profitable in itself, they are entirely missing the point of LAG play.

its to get paid the max later on, when they really shouldnt get paid otherwise.

Excellent post, sounds like a great strategy. I need learn how to apply a deepstack so I could run this strategy.

For those saying will this work vs shortstack game's. I play in 300$ buyin 3/5 game. Everynight you can look across the room and see guys with stacks of 600bbs on the table. At that point they play everyhand.

I think the most accurate element of OP's post is the point of raising in LP with semi-speculative hands that can bust people who are willing to stack off light with hands like top pair. In recent weeks since I've started keeping more detailed playing logs at 1/2NL my best pots came when raising hands like 97s, 108s, Q9s, in late position to like $7-10 and having several players come along. When I flop 2pair+ I can continue and get at least 1 calling station to come along or some monkey to occasionally reraise.

I also like these type plays because frequently people will check around to me that gives me the option of a free card if I have a longshot draw or something weak like 3rd pair. It's somewhat similar to raising on the flop in a limit game and taking a free card. I cannot tell you how many times 1/2NL players will instinctively check to the preflop raiser even when it is a smallish, pot building type raise. The most important aspect to remember is to utilize your positional advantage when you have it. In the slower pace of live play you have to take advantage of inherent edges when you get em.

My .02$.

--Dizzle

This OP is going to do alot of damage, not necessarily in a good way.

To the skeptics, think about it this way. How do you like having this guy at your table? Not the stupid LAG who just raise bet bet bets every hand without regard for position. The guy who raises your limps from the button, puts pressure on you with marginal hands, doesn't pay you off when you show aggression and wins tons of pots without showing his cards. Do you like that guy at your table? I don't. Do you like that guy on your left, or the guy who plays pairs, AK-AJ, KQ, KJ, QJ and maybe J10 if he can limp on the button? Do you like that guy, or the guy whose idea of being tricky is betting with a flush draw then shutting down if he doesn't hit?

It's like the NFL on 4th down. The idiot commentators are always saying YOU CANT RISK GOING FOR IT on 4th and short from the other team's 40. But when you're on defense, you're praying the other team's idiot coach punts.

youre kidding me??

maybe youre right? (NOT)

ever hear the saying? : never give a gun to a duck???

i think it applies here.

however, the problem isnt with the gun, its the duck


Riverman wins.
i'd say that of all the ppl i play with (excluding some shots at 5/10), i run into about a handful in total of what i would call dangerous players. this is out of a pool of prolly 500 players or more? they are a tiny tiny minority? almost unicorns. a real card player is actually a very rare thing.
they go beyond making good decisions.
several guys that come to mind are not actually pros in that they have great jobs, and great income outside of poker, but still love and study the game, and excel just like a pro putting in big hours on it.
actually what make them even more dangerous than a pro is that they dont care about the $ as much.
its truly a game to them. there are some other guys ive heard of by name, or play bigger
i avoid sitting at their table, and try to make friends with them, and talk poker when i see them around.
im not saying that you should try to play like they do as a long term goal, even.
im saying that you should be aware of LAG play and learn it from the inside , firstly to come up with a defense for it;
and also to just know what direction is the natural one for the progression of your learning and skill set.
I played horrible LAG when i discovered it (used to play 2/3 chip dumping game at the old dirty Cal Grand
prolly @6+ years ago, and you could get away with it so much more back then. (the skill level there now is prolly still 10 years behind, but the rake sucks ass)
The stacks would get really deep late night sometimes, so you were correctly playing a lot of hands vs. passive doubting stations. i was over confident and tried crazy plays that sometimes worked. plays i wouldnt consider now,
even though i sucked at it, (LAG) i got a pass cuz the field was so weak.
i remember only afterwards actually starting to recognize what a good LAG was doing when id run into one.
before, what i would have been baffled by before started to make sense.
a unknown might sit down, and after 2 hands, you can see that hes a LAG, when it may not be obv to anyone else. especially if you play his style better than he does.
If you want to be a successful TAG, and youre comfortable with that style as it suits your personality and goals, you still want to be adept at all the styles, esp the most profitable ones, i would think?

you think even actionDan H, the biggest TAG cant play the hell out of LAG style if he wants to because its appropriate at the situation???

Even if you dont need a tool right this minute, you still need to have it in your tool belt.

1. Depends on the player, but generally I'm value betting way thinner than most TAGs. Most average low limit players don't limp with KJ, call my raise, hit their king and think "now I can trap him." They think "I need to end this hand now because who knows what he has and I won't know if/when he hits." So they'll announce their hand. This applies even when they hit monsters like sets or straights. In most cases, they'll flop raise/jam their good hands, so you can profitably value bet and hope they get stubborn.

As a corollary, lots of guys will flop raise WAY too small and give you odds to bust them. Like if you c-bet 20 with a gutshot and they minraise you 500 deep in a 1-2 game, they are begging to get busted and usually will go broke if you hit.

2. The guys who do this are usually easy to identify. 'Trap the LAG' guy is actually 'Scared of the LAG guy' in most cases. They're just nits. The KQ/AQ example is usually just something you won't be able to avoid, but against a fair number of uber-nits you can shut down on the turn.

Very good post, and I agree with virtually everything you said, except this:

I'm all for playing pots in position, but I don't think we should be calling raises with hands that weak. 87s? Sure. A8s? Go for it.

As an aside, I think it's worth pointing out that I'm much more willing to play suited aces (with bad kickers) in a typical 1-2 NL game than I am if I'm up against what I perceive to be tough players. The reason for this is that I see a lot of players getting in there with suited garbage. While you're not going to flush over flush somebody all that often, the opportunity to bust somebody when you do is worth a try, IMO.

Anyway, back to the original point. I think we can take advantage of position as well as the relative weakness of other players without dropping our preflop standards that drastically.

My personal perspective on it is this: If you're going to play a hand as weak as 84s in position, I'd actually prefer to raise a limper with it than calling an UTG raise with it. I like being the aggressor as much as possible, which allows me to win a lot of pots without making a hand. Unless you're big on floating the flop and taking pots away on the turn (which I'm not, especially against players who aren't firing a second barrel unless they have it), I don't think it's a great idea to be calling raises with hands like suited three-gappers, especially eight-high.

Obviously there are multiple ways to win, and I'd be willing to listen to an argument to the contrary, but I just think it's unnecessary to get involved with such weak hands on a regular basis, hoping for a perfect flop.

Thanks for posting.

Go Blue.

Yes!

I wholeheartedly agree.

I generally don't have the stones to make these types of plays, but I do prefer them to just calling.

You are a spewtard, though. Advocating to call raises with 84s in position at a 1/2 live table?! what?

Most of the good posters on here who actually know what they're doing advocate playing a much more straight-forward valuebet type of game at llsnl...............and then a post like this comes out?

Its amazing how a forum on poker can even be constructed and stabilized. There's so many different opinions on each minuscule aspect of the game that a forum like this almost has no integrity. Nobody knows who to listen to.

Ive played lag poker as you describe before. I used to think it was the way to be a winning player. I did okay. i was probably profitbale....just not that much. Then, i dabbled in stud for a little while, and it unintentionally tightened up my pre-flop starting hands for hold 'em. I let the change take its natural course, and i realized that being an overly-reckless wannabe tom dwan is terrible. Im not saying i dont ever bluff, or dont open 89s from MP. Its just, in general, many many many llsnl players make a ridiculous amount of mistakes....ALL the time. pre, post, river....whenever. A much more patient and "valuebet" type game will be a little more boring, but it will yield huge profits with much smaller varaince (in consideration).

Im just throwing out my .02 man.....to each his own. GL.

I think it's also worth mentioning that a lot of bad players will open up their hand range just because they have a lot of chips. If you built a stack by playing TAG, suddenly playing a lot more pots, especially if you're not playing them aggressively, is not going to do anything for you. Your stack will quickly dwindle.

Also, the fact that you doubled up might not even matter that much. If you have 200 big blinds, but everyone else has 100 big blinds or less, nothing has really changed. The other players might think it has, but you should know better. Be aware of effective stacks, and how they dictate you should be playing, or whether you should be playing at that table at all.

I'm not calling 84s as a default play. But if I am over 200bb deep and I'm against someone who is easy to read who will stack off with AA, I'm calling every time and feeling great about it.

My counter-argument would be this, and be honest. Say you see a guy bust AA with 84s for 200bb each. Are you really going to do anything other than assume Mr. 84s is an idiot? Most people trying to play well will assume the 84s guy is a complete donk, which is exactly what I want.

with 700BB stacks its a crime to fold 84s OTB vs. passive stations.
its not only incorrect, its criminal.
youve got a bunch of ways to put on the brakes, so whats the problem??
riverman pointed it out very well. youre the aggressor. thats the key. its like a fail safe.
you tighten up on the later streets and only give action to their aggression when they are crushed.
other than that you are beating them up in small pots, and only ever getting trapped for the minimum.
(which is okay with a nit to win a small pot).

thats why they call it LAG. AG=aggression.
i hear LAG this and TAG that, around the forum all the time and it doesnt apply at all to the players, H, or V, and how the hand is played, and the style. theres nothing AG about it.
Rivermans style is definately true LAG, w/ the AG, and hes getting flak, and in the mean time every hand history on 2+2 involves LAGS and TAGS, when in reality you rarely run into it. most LLS players are passive., very passive.

I have played both ways successfully. It depends on the mood I am in and the table.

You have to be willing to get in the game 3-5 buyins sometimes to cash out 5-8 buyins.

An example of playing TAG, I played at the casino the other day for 10 hours. I hovered around 75-150 bb most of the night. Between the hours of 2-5am when the drunk guys came is where I won a few big pots and cashed out a 200BB winner.

I made the most that I could during the first part of the session vs the NIT regs by playing TAG. Had I opened my game up there was potential to win much more imo and then tighten up as the drunkies came.

to me, its the difference between picking up fruit of the ground, and climbing the tree to get it.
you get the very best fruit if you arent lazy, and you take some risks, thats all.
otherwise, its the scraps.

I completely disagree. Just because we have a lot of chips doesn't mean we should be playing 65% of the hands all of a sudden.

Also, in the games I'm playing in, the odds of one player, let alone multiple players at the same table, having 700+ big blinds are not good.

How does calling a raise with 84s hoping to crush the flop constitute aggression?

The live one with 200bb+ who raises to 5 bb or so with AA and will stack off? Well yeah but seems to be a fairly rare player type to me.

I'm guessing that flopping 2 pair or better with a 3 gap suited connectors is around 19-1 (could be wrong about that).

If 8-4s flops 2 pair rainbow flop without an Ace then the equity is about 72 percent according to PokerStove.

I guess these live ones always call when you flop a straight, flush, full house or quads.

If you flop one pair on the flop you're typically around a 4-1 dog and they always get timid and don't bet enough to make a call unprofitable on either the flop or the turn giving you sufficient implied odds. Diddo for all the other suckouts. They just pay off no matter what. Plus sometimes when 8-4s makes their hand on the turn or river AA makes a better one but it's still a +EV call. Ok.

Great post, kind of reminds me of the thread I made a couple months back, when I decided to go LAG. Never made so much money since. I did an experiment one weekend and decided to go back to the overlimping instead of iso-raising, and that was my worst session in a long time.


http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...e-lag-1129409/

The late position raising with playable semi-garbage hands was the best discovery I've ever made in poker.

It is also worth noting that this style makes you a better player faster. When you play lots of hands against different kinds of players you gain valuable experience. If your goal is to move up and win, there is real value in constantly having decisions to make.

When you play this style you identify the different player types quickly, and there are a bunch of them. Some notables:

1. He's not going to bluff me guy. This guy is usually over 50, very clean cut, and is often reading a magazine or watching his horse bets or texting a bunch or whatever. He will only enter pots with premium hands, and he doesn't plan on folding them. You can c-bet against this guy, but that's it unless you have the goods. The upside is he will pay you off. Bonus: he will likely berate you! You will also likely spot him talking under his breath to his neighbor about how bad you are.

2. I came here with $200 and it's going to last guy. This guy is usually in his 20s, and probably came with some friends. He has allocated 200 dollars for the evening and plans on only putting money in with the nuts. But he will usually limp/call hoping to hit a monster, then fold the flop. Isolate him and watch him fold the flop.

3. The Station. Conventional advice is to never bluff the station. WRONG. Bluff the station for small amounts and show win or lose. Most stations think twice when the bets get big, but if you plant the crazy image in their head they will call off huge bets.

4. True maniacs. Abandon everything I've written in this thread and wait for the goods. Get it in good and hope to hold up.

These LAG vs. TAG debates seem to come up here periodically. They just never die....

The OP wrote a good post on what he believes is the best way to maximize win in deep, weak games. It's true - if a good player were at that table who was head and shoulders above the field in postflop play, that's the style he would adopt. Most people here don't have those skills yet. A good number of people don't play in deep games. For you applying the advice given will hurt far more than help. It doesn't mean you shouldn't understand LAG play or start opening up when the situation becomes appropriate. It's just for a lot of you it isn't most of the time.

The people who are good LAGs (rare) don't play the way they do because they are LAGs. They play the way they do because game conditions are favorable for that style, and they have spotted enough of their opponents' exploitable tendencies that they can easily see how to exploit them. If you read the OP, don't see why/when/which moves make sense and how they exploit your opponents' tendencies, then you shouldn't do what the OP suggested until you do.

My advice for most of you: as you play TAG, start looking for plays you can make if you were LAGgier. Don't make them yet - but pay attention to your opponents and try to sharpen your hand reading. Once you see that your hand reading vs. a specific villain is pretty sharp because you know his game well - then you can start considering opening your game way up IP to exploit him. Don't start with wishful thinking that you have an edge, and play crappy cards hoping to make moves. Prove to yourself that you have a good handle on your opponents ranges/tendencies first, and only then open up. My 2c - I am done, I am sure this will be like a 200 post thread, but from someone who thought LAG was the way to go because that's what the cool kids do and who lost a bunch of money before becoming good enough to understand how stupid what I was doing was, that's what I would do.

Excellent point. The more hands you play and the more different situations you put yourself in, the quicker you're going to grow and get comfortable.

It's also important to remember, if you're relatively new to the game, that playing this style is going to put you in some tough spots where you're playing a fairly big pot with a somewhat marginal hand. For that reason, I advise mastering the TAG style of play before you open things up like this.

Thank you for a dose of sanity in this thread.

Lol I can't believe there is a battle over this. It's just different styles.

If you don't play deep games though you probably don't understand. I literally have two different styles of play depending on the time of day im in the room. TAG when it's all little old ladies from 12:00 until there dinner time at 5:30 and then more posistional LAG as the night goes on. I play in a room with uncapped games and it's not uncommon for a table to have 5 players with +350bb.

If you don't play that deep of a game you probably should not be critical of OP because there are LOTS of donks that will stack an overpair 300bb deep without a thought. Also, I only change my ranges in posistion. I don't open pots UTG with J9s.

I'll be honest I wouldn't play 85s though...86s yea. I just hate 74, 96, etc. nit imo.