My image is a TAG, a very Tight TAG...but what seems to be happening is that I can't change up my game or bet another player off their hand because these players NEVER fold!

Yes, it's good for me when I have the nuts, but I would like to "play" a bit and possibly win without having the best hand, or make a bluff every once in a while, but it doesn't seem like a +EV move as I can't get anyone to fold!

How can I improve my hourly rate under these conditions??? I'm stuck grinding out a small profit each money, but it's getting boring and my overall play is suffering, as I've become a one dimentional player.

Suggestions?

Do I need to move up in stakes to find better players?

Thanks.........

Poker isn't for everyone. Then there is poker/life coaching. Phil Helmuth uses one. Maybe so should you.

And moving up stakes to find better players? You bet. Move up to 10/20 and I promise you'll find better players.

Thanks.........:-)

loose passive games like these are gold mines. of course you will suffer more variance in a game of showdown but in the long run you will profit more.
learn each players tendency's. narrow down their range and value bet them into bankruptcy.

easy game

I ran into a legendary micro full ring grinder at the V recently; BF forced him to transition to live play.

In our conversation, he referred to 1/2 as "bingo." the idea being that you win $$ when you make bingo, and lose when you don't.

Welcome to 1/2, OP. there are spots in 1/2 to make plays other than relentlessly betting your value hands, but, for the most part, it is just playing bingo.

Stop exaggerating. I am quiet certain that you have played a hand of 1/2 poker where it didn't go to showdown. Not being able to look at things clearly is a huge leak.

Start thinking about those situations. Examine those situations and figure out why people folded (and it isn't because they only had J high). I'll note that bluffing takes some skill and most 1/2 players are horrible at it. You have to be a good storyteller and learn to pick good situations to bluff.

One example. The pfr is oop to you HU on the flop. The board is two-tone and the pfr bets pot and you call with SP. Turn completes the FD and the pfr checks. You have a high likelihood of winning the pot with a bet. You get bonus points for being called an obvious donk for calling without odds.

Thanks for your advise.

NewLiveFish - you're correct I do have leaks and Thanks for pointing this one of many out. I will take your advise and try to think/play at a different level. I wish I had some people to talk poker locally.

mpethybridge - I guess you're right about $1-$2NL being Bingo...it might be time to move up to $2-$5NL

I feel like 1/2 is bingo for the most part, because you do HAVE to hit your hand. However i dont feel as if its not profitable, depending on the rake anyways.

If you cant adjust to how the players play at the 1/2 then how do you expect to adjust to the higher limit players?

If bluffing never works, then DONT bluff...at all! Minimize your cbets and double barrels and tighten up your preflop raising range. Limp in, in position for as cheap as you can with a very wide range, and minimize your limp calling light.

And when you hit, play for stacks. Bet, Bet, Bet. Make them pay for it and set yourself up, so when you do push all in on the river, you stack off. Also once you get to know the people at the table, you will know there tendencies and you can play each person differently.

And dont be afraid to fold you big preflop hands like AA,KK,QQ when you raise pre and there are like 5 callers and the flop comes out gross and easy with two pair/set possibilities. and there are raises and reraises. After all, its just one pair.

It just comes down to a numbers game at that point i feel. Just play the hands that are a favorite to win most of the time and you will eventually come out on top. Just like if you out it all in with ace's preflop all the time and someone calls and they win 20 times in a row...doesnt mean its a bad play. Just means variance is punching you in the face.

Anyways Thats how i feel.

did anyone realize OP suggested that he will find success by moving up to where they respect his raises?

I think that would be a mistake. If you struggle to beat the bad players at 1/2, what makes you think you'll beat the better players at a higher level? You might get away with more bluffs, but do you think they'll pay you off as much when you make your hands?

You need to loosen up a bit preflop with respect given to position. These players are loose you do not need to play so tight. This will help you hit more and value bet them to death. There are a lot more you can do but this will be a start and you can learn from there. By loosening up a bit I do not mean bluffing or limping. You come in raising if it gets to you with no limpers. You can find an amount that will limit the callers after you. Open up your range from middle position on back. Moving upi does not sound like an option.

I'm grinding 1-2 as my part time job, playing TAG is defly the most effective style imo, but in order to make it more effective, you also need to adjust. if the villain and you are both over 200-250BBs deep, you can open up your range a bit and maybe try a move or two. I do understand where you come from though, sometimes I'm not playing a hand in 2-3 orbits..sigh..everyone will tell you the same thing: don't bluff against calling stations, make your hand and get paid off by worse...gl man

To say that you should "never" bluff at 1/2 is simply bad thinking, even in really loose games. There are always players at the table that you can bluff when you see a good spot. Of course, sometimes it seems that these spots never come up but they do.

I've never been at a 1/2 table where EVERY player was a calling station. And if I had, I sure wouldn't have complained about it!!!

Stop needing the nuts to bet for value.

[QUOTE=mpethybridge;30134583]I ran into a legendary micro full ring grinder at the V recently; BF forced him to transition to live play.

In our conversation, he referred to 1/2 as "bingo." the idea being that you win $$ when you make bingo, and lose when you don't.

Welcome to 1/2, OP. there are spots in 1/2 to make plays other than relentlessly betting your value hands, but, for the most part, it is just playing bingo.[/QUOTE]

This is absurd. mpethybridge has made some excellent posts on 2+2. hopefully this is just a silly quip.

As mentioned above, moving up to where you think people will respect your raises is always a terrible idea.

OP, people are attracted to poker initially due to the gambling aspect and the fact that one can win in the long term. We watched it on TV and the impression is that winning poker is about making sick bluffs and hitting flips. Everyone wants to be like durrrr.

However, as players get better, they realize that winning poker is about doing a lot of little things well. Sick bluffs is always going to be a small part of the game. For example, Dan Harrington in HOH mentioned that he makes a bluff about once every 1.5 hours. OK you say, but Harrington is a nit. What about durrrr? In the first appearance on HSP, durrrr wrote that he played the first 3 hours without making one single bluff.

My point is that sick bluffs are great TV. That's why you see so many of them. But they aren't a significant part of any long time winning player's game. And they aren't really bluffs in a sense. They are a finely calculated combination of fold equity calculations and a quick sense of what the story line that is being told in the hand.

The one of the biggest leaks LLSNL players have is they play too many hands oop. The extra $1 to see a flop with ATC in the SB. Limp/calling in EP with small PP or SC. Clear those leaks and while you won't get the thrill of winning a big pot, your BR will go up faster with less variance.

I disagree with 1/2 being bingo. There's lots of room to improve your winrate beyond just value betting better (see above). What many on-line players aren't used to doing is measuring a person's and table's temperature for action, because it does swing. They are used to just leaving tables if the PPH drops below a set value for them and watching their HUD. In live, you can use the temperature to judge when to steal pots. If you're sitting with your hoodie up, ear buds in and texting your friends, you're likely to miss these opportunities. Not to mention the lack of picking up other reads.

I play in these types of games and I can honestly
say I dont bluff at all and like you play only the
good starting hands. I play tight in EP to MP.
Limp a lot more CO and BTN after limpers.

I cant see how I can improve my game so that when I do move
up I can beat better players. I think I am easy to read I play
straight forward when I get a nutty hand I bet bet bet, if I get
a good run of cards I can win big but when I dont........I can't
beqt anyone.

I just seem to fold too much or give up on hands, because
its easy to come up with reasons to fold, its a MW pot and I
have a weak hand or ace high or a bad draw, or a LP just bet pot
or the turn card completes a draw and its a MW pot etc.

OP if you are having problems at 1/2 moving up to 2/5 will not help at all, I assure you that. Most players at 2/5 are way more competent.

I agree about limp calling SC EP.. But you're saying you fold 44 EP? No l/c to set mine? Too transparent? The guys at $1/$2 never see it coming when I hit.

fyp

also venice pretty much just laid out the golden truth about llsnl. It is a different game than online ENTIRELY and is all about picking that glorious spot every hour or two.

implied odds are greatly reduced when OOP because you do not have control over betting. thus set mining becomes significantly less valuable as a strategy.

[QUOTE=stran;30150120] I thank you for the kind words.

As I reported in my post, the "bingo" characterization was not mine; it came from a player/coach for whom I have enormous respect, and who is generally doing very well in his live play.

I am a little reluctant to defend his analogy, because I don't want to speak for him. But I will expand a little on my understanding of what he meant, and why I believe he spoke abfundamental truth about live low stakes.

Let me start by reiterating what I said:

there ate spots for making plays other than relentlessly betting your value hands, but, for the most part, it is just playing bingo.

Ok, so before I even stated the general rule, I noted the exception; there ARE spots for making plays. There are times and places for an occasional well-timed bluff, or an occasional float IP.

But, as I noted, live low stakes is essentially a game of relentlessly betting your value hands.

Does anybody seriously question this statement? I don't see how anybody could possibly. It is a basic truth not just about live low stakes, but poker in general. Everything else we do in poker is designed to a greater or lesser extent to get us paid off when we do relentlessly bet our value hands. Everything else we do in poker is done for the purpose of balancing our value hands--making it less obvious when we do or do not have a value hand.

EVERYTHING serves this deceptive purpose.

Thus, as you move up through the stakes, you should always be questioning the extent to which you need to deceive your opponents by doing things other than only relentlessly betting your value hands.

It should be immediately obvious, then, that you only need to do things other than value bet to the extent that your opponents are thinking about your hand, and also how well they are thinking about what hand you have.

At live low stakes, people are not thinking a lot about your hand, and they are not doing so very well. Thus, there simply is not much reason for going out of your way to deceive them. As I noted at the outset, however, there ARE some places where it is appropriate to deceive them.

So when is that? When do we make a bluff? When don't we make a bluff?

In my opinion, you should primarily be bluffing at live low stakes for the purpose of converting a particular hand you are playing from a loss to a win. You ordinarily should not be bluffing to balance or merge your ranges (although there is an important exception to this rule--semi-bluffing).

In other words, I think it is incorrect to c-bet a flop you missed because "I would c-bet top pair, too." but c-betting that same missed flop because the caller(s) will fold if he didn't flop top pair+ is perfectly fine.

The characterization of live low limit, to me, means that our primary emphasis is overwhelmingly simply to get value from our big hands. Making plays to deceive the other players about the strength of your holding is largely (not entirely) unnecessary, and way more often than not, -EV.

The person I was speaking to intended, I think, tonsay all of this in an amusing way. I think he succeeded, but the important thing to me is that the extent to which the bingo characterization is seen as patronizing or condescending not obscure the fundamental truth behind what he said.

Bingo is great word for these games

The 1/2 games I play in have plenty of folding. +1 to the post that told you to stop exaggerating.

Common Reasons that 1/2 players fold:
1. Your bet was too big
2. They missed their draw and the river was just dealt
3. They don't want to reload

If you can't beat bad players, you are worse than they are. 1/2 can easily be beaten for $20+ an hour.

Recognize who can't fold, value bet them. Similarly recognize who's scared, run them over. My favorite are the guys who only fold on the river.

You cant run over people who dont fold lol

This is so not true! It's just that we have to focus on one aspect to capitalize our edge (value betting) rather than the other (bluffing). As soon as you can value-bet thin, you can run people over because they don't fold their weak hands. It's not like we're trying to get people to fold the nuts, so why do we need to the nuts to bet for value?

Oh and FWIW, I still can't understand what people are talking about when they say they cannot bluff at live low stakes...