Anecdotes of my ephiphany

Cliff's notes: Playing LAG is not all about getting people to fold. Nor is it about expanding your range from all positions. It's about playing more hands heads up in position and still playing weaker hands well. Position, think value betting, big folds, big calls, are all important.

In my short 2/5 live career (just exceeded the 100 hour experience log this past week), I have progressed from a fish with theory and no experience, to the nitty nut peddaler, to the spewy crazy monkey who just won't give up a pot, and finally to a decent LAG.

When I was at the spewy crazy monkey stage, I didn't understand what playing LAG meant. I thought it was just playing extra hands and playing them more aggressively to get people to fold. I would raise turns and rivers as bluffs habitually because at low stakes live, it's perceived as a very strong move. But of course, after I did that too much, people started calling with all kinds of weak hands because they knew that I raised turns and rivers too often. Of course, there was also the group that called just because they weren't thinking, and they felt like it. I would also triple barrel against fish who obviously had an A with a weak kicker and had no consideration of kicker. All they knew was that they had a pair of aces. I pounced on 100% of scare cards even when it was obvious that a good player was pot controlling on an earlier street to call the river no matter what it was.

Wrong, all wrong. That's not the way it works.

So what exactly is playing LAG?
Well, obviously looser means that you're adding more hands. Does this mean that you should limp UTG with your suited connector so you can see a flop multi-way with this hand? Or just raise with that suited connector from early position for deception and deal with the OOP problem later? Or add Ato and Kjo to your EP raising range? No, wrong again.

My early position ranges are still the same as the nit's. But most players in my games aren't good enough to realize that. All they know is that they've seen me show down weird hands that I raised with. Position is everything to a LAG. The correct way to add more hands is to add more opportunities to play heads up or at most 3 ways in position, when you will be able to use good hand reading skills to maximize value, bluff catch, and bluff (when appropriate).

Iso-raising limpers, even with marginal hands, was probably the most powerful new tool I added to my arsenal. I'll rarely overlimp a cascade of limpers anymore. Why? You have no fold equity when there are 7 players to the pot, and it's simply not profitable to see the flop for the sole purpose of making your hand. Also, you want to make it so that when you hit a medium strength hand that turns out to be the best hand, you'll be able to value bet it to the fullest rather than wondering if it's the best hand. This is easiest against fewer opponents. I mean, when you flop something as good as TPTK in a huge multi-way pot, the odds aren't in your favor to still have the best hand by the river. I'll almost always raise to isolate limpers, particularly from the button or cutoff, with any semi-playable hand, whether I have AA or K9. Even if I have K9, I'll do it and play well post flop (This means, worry about kicker only when it might actually matter, steal the pot when villain misses, and value bet appropriately when I think I'm ahead, even when it's with a pair of 9's)

Guess what? Suited connectors still do better heads up than multi-way. I'll still os-raise with these from late position. Don't get sucked into thinking that you would rather limp in with one in a 7-way pot on the button. When you make your flush against several opponents, you have to worry about a higher one. When you chase your open ended straight draw to a non-nut straight, you have to worry about a higher one. This is so much less of a concern heads up. Finally, when you flop a strong draw, you want the fold equity to go along with it so that you don't absolutely have to make your hand to win the pot. This is no-existent with too many players in a pot.

I'll make an exception for small pocket pairs suited aces and sometimes just limp with those. I want the opportunity to overflush someone. Set over set is a lot less common than flush over flush, so it's a chance I'm willing to take. Besides, nobody's folding a higher pocket pair anyway if you try to iso-raise with a small one. But they might fold a suited ace OOP if you raise with a suited connector, which will gin your outs in the event that the flush does hit.

Oh yeah, one more thing. Value betting thin is an art I have yet to master completely, and definitely key to LAG play. It's ok if you're value owning yourself. There are plenty of opportunities to bet less than top pair for value if you keep your opponent's perceived calling range in mind. Technically, if you're ahead 51% of the time, you made a good bet. As long as there are more combinations of worse hands in a villain's range that can call the bet than better ones, bet. And it comes with the added bonus that you might accidentally bluff out a better hand.

The concept of bet/folding strong but non-monster hands is also important. Don't be paranoid that people are bluff raising you just because you understand that move, unless you've specifically witnessed them making such a play before. Most players up to the level of live 2/5 are not sophisticated enough.

Playing LAG doesn't necessarily even mean that you have to play more aggressively. If you blindly barrel every flop, turn, and river, everyone will know that your bets mean squat. In fact, I think I may have even toned down the aggro factor lately. It's ok to give up pots when you're beaten. If you're playing more hands with a weaker range on average, you should, in fact, be folding more often. There are enough fit-or-fold players that you'll be able to steal enough pots from them that you don't have to run a large and extravagant bluff to get them off a flush on a paired board to make a profit.

Don't get me wrong with the above point. Fold equity is still important. But picking the right spots and right opponents is key. When we both miss the flop, I get the pot most of the time. That's plenty of steal already. If I really think a good tight player will fold a rather strong hand from a convincing bluff consistent with a real hand, I'll also try that once in a while.

Finally, remember that even when your image is loose, few players are playing back at you with weak hands as often as you might think they are. They still wait around for a monster so they could have the goods to play back at you. It was common knowledge that I was raising many hands from late position, but every time someone 3-bet me, it was still a monster. Easy fold. I'm no longer going to level myself into calling with AJ because I think someone might be 3-betting light, unless I have specifically seen that villain make such a move.

Big calls are still important against players who are trying to run you over because they think your range is weak. But often times, they're still not good enough to be representing a real hand when they're playing back at you. I don't worry that I'm making a "donkey call" on the river with bottom pair or A high. If somebody's obviously trying to blow me off a hand with betting that doesn't correspond to a real hand, I'm calling off my stack with second pair. If he wants to donate a couple buyins to me, I'll take it.

Brag: If this is my 100 hours of experience epiphany, I can't wait to see what my 200 hour one will be.

200 hour epiphany might be that trying to make hands when you're playing deep against fish who stack off way too light in limped pots is profitable.

There are plenty of posts about how to play effective TAG poker but not enough about how to play LAG. I like the idea.

I don't agree with your assessment of iso-raising and playing with suited connectors. The most effective LAGs I have seen do the exact opposite when IP. They get to the flop cheap and then outplay their opponents from there. This is especially true in low-limit where people call everything just to see a flop. Iso-raising rarely works, at least where I play.

As sknight said in one of the posts on MSFR in one of my threads, to successfully bluff someone you need to be playing on a level one level above them. Was a simple/obvious point, but really hit me. For you to play LAG against people, you need to be playing one level above them, since all you are doing is entering with a wide range trying to use position/skill to outplay them. So to be good at this you need to understand your opponent's tendencies in general, and in this very specific moment very well, and play off of those tendencies. This is very hard, as all but the worst opponents will start to respond to you, and not all in the same way. So you need to be adjusting to stay one level ahead of them.

Cliffs: LAG is very hard to play and requires real mastery over your opponents to execute. Takes a lot more than 100 hours to get there, and is expensive to be practicing it while you are building towards that mastery since good TAG with some positional LAG components is a far cheaper way to get to the level you need to be at to play LAG...

What types of things are you doing to further "master the art" of vbetting thin, as you put it?

To start out, I value shoved QQ on an A high board on the river in a 3-bet pot and got called by TT because I could tell that the villain was afraid of the A, which meant that he obviously didn't have one. Stationy villain, and I knew his range was mostly medium PP's and that he would be stubborn enough to call. I'm looking for more opportunities like that.

This. Why would I want to scare the fish away with an all-too-obvious LP raise? And how much am I going to raise to get the cascade of limpers to drop, aside from that one who's going to call OOP and hopefully whiffs/folds to my c-bet?

Picture this: you're in a 2/5 game, sitting on $1500, up $500 on the session in about two hours time. The table has been
fun, friendly, and full of action. A bunch of players are sitting on stacks of 200bb or more, and there are only two other known winning players in the game. The following hand arises...

...utg limps, along with utg +1, and before it reaches you in
the cutoff, the whole table has limped. You look down at 78, and you fire in a healthy raise of 9x, looking to iso somebody. The button folds, the blinds fold, and your left with the five limpers. Utg is a weak fish, he folds his 34 that he desperately wanted to play, bc he wore that number on his high school football team. utg +1 is one of the winning
players, he's a solid reg and you've played with him a bunch, but most of the time, you've managed to stay out of each other's way. He has you covered and calls. Everyone else folds, the flop is 256. Utg kicks the table and starts whispering to the guy on his right, while utg+1
stoically checks. You flopped a straight draw with a backdoor flush draw, so you make a c-bet of $75, continuing with the story that you have a big pair. Villain calls w/out hesitation. The turn is the 5, villain checks. You now have a straight flush draw, so you fire another bullet...$125. Villain
checks his cards, pauses, looks like he might fold, but seems to convince himself to call. River is the 9. Villain checks, you put out a bet of $250, looking to get value for your straight. Villain thinks for about ten seconds, then raises to $725. How easy is it to let your hand go? He must have 6's full, right? Or maybe 9's full. You wind up tank-folding, convinced he's got a boat, and as he's raking in the big pot, he
flips over 45, certain that he cracked your big overpair.

Now imagine how the hand might've played out had you joined the limpfest.

In the hypothetical hand, I C/C the river to let busted draw bluff, lose the least to full houses, and let worse straights value own themselves. Villain's range consists primarily of these hands, so there's more value in C/C than B/F

If I joined the limp fest, by the time it got down to the river, I would still have to wonder about someone having a boat, wouldn't I?

Oh, my bad, I'm IP. Well then, if villain was competent like you said, he'd bet the river himself. Then, I'd just call and win the pot.

If he opted for the C/R, he couldn't expect an OP to call the raise, and if he checked, the OP might check back causing him to lose value on the river.

First, in the hypothetical hand, you can't c/c as you're in position. I can't ever see checking behind here, and villain is RARELY checking a boat.

However, I agree with you that if this were a limp-fest, you might get blown off the hand on the flop/turn, unless you're willing to call 200bb on a paired board with a s/f draw, which is pretty questionable. I agree that being LAGgy with these kinds of hands in position is +ev for many reasons. Narrowing the ranges of your opponents and understanding the combinations of cards they can have is key to playing LAG in position.

Great story op, wow at some of the responses. This is 2+2 ,why is limping still in your arsenal? You should have found out ages ago, that is not how you play poker.

Not online poker but it is very much a weapon when playing live.

Good luck to you guys trying to iso-raise in live low limit poker, lol. Tell me how it turns out.

I iso raise all the time, my key is 4 or less limpers with reads, I prefer 3 or less. I learned the technique about a year ago. From a highstakes player who decided to play 5/5 waiting for a 5/10 table. I was amazed of how he played the game. He was a hoody wearing asian internet kid. I talked to him and he said that people think you cant play real tag/lag live but they are wrong. Now I just lol at the noobs waiting to make a hand. Over limping is for new players. Online or live, calling is a leak, the plan is to raise or fold. If you think about it, almost every situation that a tag/lag puts themselves in is a raise or fold situation.

got it. calling always bad. must raise. not sure why i didn't think of that.

Where do you play live? Because that does not fly on the east coast.

If you don't believe me just read any of the "how to succeed at live low limit" threads. Iso-raising is almost impossible at low limits where so many just wants to gamble and have fun with any pair, suited connector, aces, or faces.

Does iso raising correctly, ie. bet size work better? I have seen it work at 1-2, 2-5 where it does narrow the field down to 4 or less, most of the time 3 or less. I didn't do this with my QQ, (see one of my posts), and payed a price with flush on the river. the villan had 9-3 suited

"Narrowing" a field to 3 others isn't iso-raising.

At 2/5, 1-2 limpers, I make it 25, 3 limpers I make it 30, 4 limpers I make it 35, any more than that, I make it 40. I usually don't get more than 2 callers with these numbers.

The semi-decent regs who limp (don't ask me why they do this) will fold SC's Ax or weak broadway type hands OOP. Fish who just wanna see a flop will call. It's not like the entire table is fish who just wanna play the hand no matter what they have.

I play in Seattle. People are tight with their money here. Iso-raising can work at low stakes live but not at every table. Even at the right table, you have to choose your hand selectively.

Usually, I find the preflop raise is better for securing position than sweeping out a cascade of limpers. If you want to sweep, you better bet the pot or more, and if you get any callers, you will be playing with low SPR's.

icantfoldsets, I'm not going to comment on the strategic aspects of your post since I think a lot of your epiphany is more or less going in the right theoretical/strategic direction, and it's too long to address, but I'll share my own thoughts on the philosophical/psychological aspect of being a LAG that I've personally encountered. Some of them might be reinforcing what you already believe.

1) Being a LAG is subject to massive variance. A lot of players on this forum play a fundamentally sound/TAG style, and have rarely experienced more than a couple 5BI downswings. As a successful LAG, you are going to win more than most people do in a session, but you're also going to be subject to massive swings. Be wary of that.

2) As you start winning a lot being a LAG, you naturally start LAGing it up even more so, and eventually you move past optimal levels of aggression. It's just a natural positive feedback reaction to winning so much. You have to be able to switch gears when people adjust, when the table dynamics make it necessary, and when you start getting out of line. Good LAGs are usually good players first, who's most defined strategy is LAG because it often blends well with the typical live lowstakes atmosphere of Tight/Passive players.

3) You need a massive sample size to determine whether or not you can be successful implementing this style. Like I alluded to earlier, you are subject to massive swings. You can go on massive heaters and feel like you've "figured poker out" because of it. With respect, I have to tell you that I don't believe you have nearly enough time invested in poker to determine whether or not you can be successful doing this.

4) People don't adjust optimally, but their sub-optimal adjustments coerce sub-optimal plays from hero's perspective. When I've had sessions where I've ran over the table, I've often seen players make ******ed moves against me that just "have to be the nuts", and I either level myself into calling thinking they're playing back at me (and it is the nuts) or I make a hero fold and find out they were full of ****. The latter often happens because players don't understand LAGs; they see reckless aggression, not well-timed aggression, and therefore the response is often to fight fire with what they perceive as fire, and use their own reckless aggression. You have to spend a lot of time gaining experience, live reads, etc to understand when either of these is taking place.

5) Table change often, seriously. We all want to think that live players are so bad and can never adjust, but they do and they can. It's just not necessarily in a GTO way, but you will get played back at after a while.

6) Suited connectors and small pocket pairs are not as valuable as you might think. A logical fallacy is that hands like KJ are bad because they are trap hands, and suited connectors are disguised and can flop monsters. In a game where people play KJ passively as often as they play 78os passively, KJ is still a stronger hand to be aggressive with. This has to do a lot with their sub-optimal adjustments, too. When you're playing very LAG, instead of flatting hands like AK/AA/KK to you, they'll often keep flatting 78ss hoping to flop a straight or 66 and flop a set and have you "recklessly barrel". I would much rather iso-raise with KQ than 78ss, because when I get 3bet both are easy folds, but when I get flatted, it's usually not against a hand 78ss plays tremendously well against; it's usually a nut-mining hand. Broadways have tremendous value against these players, but part of the reason why they are really such a trouble hand is 1) when we call a raise with them and 2) when we're not skilled enough to mitigate our RIOs. Again, this comes with experience.

A common scenario as to why I would rather play heads up and play position against a fish than get in a huge multi-way mess. This is where I make a lot of my profit

Common knowledge that fish play weird suited hands because *gasp* they can make a flush!

Fish limps, I have 5d6d and iso-raise
Completely brick the 2s 8cTc flop
Fish checks
I cbet
Fish quickly calls
Fish checks the bricked turn again
I bet again
He quickly calls again
River bricks
He quickly checks
I make a small bet, and the pot's mine

Main idea: I can even charge the fish to draw when I have air because I know I'm getting the pot if I bluff the river when they brick. They'll make a big bet when they hit hoping to get paid off because they're well, fish. And they'll check when they miss because they're fish. Since most draws miss more often than they hit, this plan = win

Try doing that with multiple limpers and the blinds that come along for the ride

Yeah, you would think that. But live poker is an entirely different animal. People didn't get in their cars and drive two hours to the poker room so that they can fold their hand when some young punk sticks in a huge raise. And when one nut job calls, you know what happens next. I find it to be waaay more profitable to limp in live poker, because it's often difficult to isolate, and bad players' mistakes will be much costlier post flop. When you iso, you're still going to find the right moves to win, but the pots will be smaller.

Don't get me wrong, I see what you're saying, and it's definitely profitable poker if you know when you can three-barrel bluff to take down a pot. but that's not the easy way, nor do I think it's going to maximize your win rate. I think we need to be able to incorporate aspects of both styles, and
adjust accordingly. Try not to pigeonhole yourself...once your thinking opponents suspect you of iso-raising in position, they're going to 3-bet you light. Yes, even at 2/5, and I know bc I do it almost every night. my image let's me get away with it, because I don't show my bluffs, and when I limp reraise with a monster, I will show. My opponents tend to remember what they see, so when I find the right opportunity to make the same move with 68, I'll do it w/out a show, and my thinking opponent gives me credit for a
monster. I kid you not, this happens nearly every night.

How can you say that essentially every type of hand plays worse in 7 way pots? If that's the case, then all 7 players are at a disadvantage. Ignoring the dead money, clearly paying $2 to see a 7 way pot for $14 is good sometimes and paying $7 to see a $14 pot 2 ways is good sometimes. Of course most of the hands that are better off 7 ways are just never good to play (like Q6 or 42 would be better 7 ways than HU), but I think SC/ one gapper is another hand that plays better for cheaper.

Also, in atlantic city, my STANDARD preflop raise at $1/$2 is $15, and I am almost always in a 3-4 way pot. with 5 limpers in front of me, i better raise to $18 or $20, and hope to god no one in the blinds calls, or ill get 6 callers. Id even limp with hands like KQs because I dont want to play it in a $140 pot.

@Midnight Cowboy
If you 3bet too often, a LAG will start shoving over the top light, in which case you can't call or flatting IP and making you play a weak hand post-flop OOP. If you do it once or twice per session, I'll just let that one pre-flop raise go.

@Tomark
I was saying that non-nutted drawing hands do better with a smaller field and nutted drawing hands do better multi-way. SC's and suited one-gappers are non-nutted drawing hands. I like it better when I know my outs are clean. If I completely miss, I still want the opportunity to pick up the pot when my opponent also misses.

Also, what you mentioned about bloated pots pre-flop is exactly why I win more in terms of BB in 2/5 than 1/2. The standard pre-flop raise sizes at 1/2 are just outrageous.