You'll be surprised how much truth there is in javi's comment.

It's a much tougher game to play than the standard ABC, because you are constantly trying to gauge your relative hand strength, whereas most people's ABC game relies much more heavily on absolute strength.

To crush in LLSNL, you will have to play closer to what javi is suggesting than a standard ABC TAG game.

No, I'm advocating we loosen up a little yet still play tighter than the fish, so we can be in more pots with them. As long as our range is better than the fish's then it's fine.

i agree with your line of thinking but disagree with your examples.

theres no reason to 3bet 76s when we no we have no fold equity. if we hit the flop hard and so does the villain, theyre giving us their stack anyway. why should we reduce our implied odds by 3betting that hand?

we need to be playing more hands and keeping our implied odds as large as possible. raising speculative hands does us no good when we have little fold equity. this is especially true when no matter what, we're getting our opponents stack when we hit our hand hard because they don't understand bet sizing. we can over bet the pot and they'll never fold draws or TPWK.

so when we have weak hands like J9s, QTo, K9o, and 87s in position facing a raise + multiple callers or facing a bunch of limpers, its better to just call, play position, look to hit our hand, and go for value.

the overall style, however, shouldn't be defined as TAG or LAG or whatever. we should be playing our table and playing our opponents. of course, most of the time, it will be LAG. we'll be looking to play as many pots as possible with high implied odds against weaker players who will stack off with weak relative value hands. however, there are certainly situations when we will need to play TAG. if the fish who are limping and stacking off with bad hands are all very shallow, playing LAG is a great way to go broke.

most of the time, you'll be at tables where some players are shallow, some are deep, some are nits, some are whales, some are solid, some are horrible, etc etc etc and you'll have to adjust your style of play every single hand. sometimes it'll be profitable to play J9o from middle position because the limpers in front of you all have deep stacks and are stacking off with top pair. other hands you might have to fold 66 or T9s because a player with an $80 stack just raised to $15. the number of situations that you'll run into are infinite. you cannot classify your play as TAG or LAG or go into any game, table, or hand telling yourself that you're going to play a certain way.

the way to crush not just 1/2 but any level is to adjust your game to best exploit the action in front of you on a hand by hand basis.

+1000

I'll never understand how a set-miner or nut peddler could possibly win long term unless he is consistently playing in extremely terrible/bad games. I'll also never understand how someone can win if they just sit there and wait for a stronger than than say two pair postflop to get their money in.

If I were to try this strategy, I would literally break-even at best because while waiting for these monsters, I would literally have my entire stack blinded away...

+1000x2

Def agree with this assesment.

Interesting discussion. Here's my 2 cents.

This is really what it comes down to. Getting value, playing vs the weak players who won't fold top pair no matter the board. Doesn't always mean getting stacks in middle, but when you have many players willing to call with Q10off on a Q high paired/flush board, that's when you have to make your pot sized/oversized river bet to get the max.

I'm finding the biggest piece (s) of information I have is to learn each player's threshold for pain.

Will they call a PSB on the river with top pair weak kicker. If so, will a slight overbet get paid off as well? Many low stakes players just want to get to showdown. Well when you get there on the turn/river and their hand is face up, make them pay for it.

table select, table select: not looking for a nitty table where i can repeatedly take down a 15 bb pot with a flop raise. looking for a table with lots of gamble where i'm gonna get paid off with a hand. hands with a lot of hooting and hollering are great.

be rolled: impossible to win big while also being afraid of losing, unless you just hit cooler after cooler after cooler -- and that ain't happening. if you have plenty of money on hand, this is not a problem.

stop loss: i have a stop loss of 2 buy ins, unless i lose them in fluke spots early on, like the first hour or two, then i'll go for a third so it's not a totally wasted visit to the poker room. your stop loss might be higher, but after a while, it's just too hard to avoid tilt, where the pain of losing is not great enough, and you stop caring. avoid those catastrophic sessions, and your win rate will be a lot closer to 'crushing it.'

position = fold equity: so, so many big pots won when i get checked to on the river and can bomb. flip the positions and that's a big pot that my opponent is winning. sometimes position is the only thing that matters.

take your time: every decision counts, and sometimes you just need time to make them. it's ok to sit there for a bit. many times, it's that extra bit of analysis that wins you that $200 pot and the extra bit of analysis not done that loses one.

playing fundamentally sound ABC poker does not preclude finding creative and imaginative ways to basically double winrates because most ppl at LLS fill fall for the stupidest s***.

if they don't know poker, they can't tell that what youre actually doing and what it looks like youre doing are in reality very very different, even though it should be glaring.

in general, ppl tend to go by what other ppl say, and how they come off, and disregard their actions.
So, therefore the kind of image that works at this level isn't gained by opening 45 UTG (they arent paying attention, and couldnt interpret your play anyways); they respond to a story;
it's true when ppl say that image isnt important at LLS, it's just that they are using the internet poker definition of image.
your physical presence opens up wider possibilities...

coming off as a 'good', or knowlegable poker player for the most part is less than an optimal image as far as profitibility is concerned IMO.
being the 'goof ball/ loose cannon' can get them to convince themselves that you are capable of plays that you simply arent (or more like, arent making because you know you don't need to make them).

X2 coming off as someone capable of bluffing. I want to get paid in massive pots not play like a nit who relies on cbets etc.

This is correct. I strongly agree with virtually every word here. Playing a strong lag game can propel you to above what the commonly agreed upon max hourly rate. Playing a solid tag style is a wining strategy but if you want to crush the games you need to play lag. Now of course in order to do so you must be comfortable in many situations and you must be in the top few percent as far as talent and understanding is concerned.