so posting flawed ranges in a strat post doesnt matter?

I'm actually not sure if you're serious.

im assuming its a typo, but to not include AQ in an utg range and 44 in an lp range is laughable. there is not a single 1/2,2/4,2/5,3/5 live table in the world where it is not profitable to open those hands. id bet my entire pathetic roll on that.

i want to chime in on the whole TAG NIT debate.

playing one certain hand in a certain position doesnt mean anything about being a TAG or nit. you can say playing 10% is nit, but its only nit in certain conditions.

playing Q8s in LP will be LAG for certain tables. but when you have a SB and BB who only play KK or AA in a raised pot then raising ATC isnt LAG or TAG, its just ABC.

i think the table conditions are too dependent to classify certain hands from certain positions as LAG TAG or NIT. sure you can say you open Q8s from LP but how many times are you actually the one opening the pot? you may have a bunch of limpers behind and raising will just create a 4 way bloated pot where you have a **** hand. this is usually the case at a 1/2 table which is why people are somewhat baffled to see a hand like that included in a pf range of a TAG.

at a semi aware 2/5 table where people understand things like position, how bad it is to play OOP, and the likes a hand like Q8s may be a TAGGY raise from LP because its just standard.

table conditions are more important than actual starting hands and positions when discussing lag or tag or nit, imo

Yeah it's pretty clearly a typo (a misclick in stove, really) since he included KQ and not AQ, and 22 and not 44.

I just don't see why it matters since the ranges are just guides on what % of hands you'd be playing.

Back on topic, I really disagree with the idea of opening 22+ at a typical 1/2 table UTG.

The plays being standard doesn't detract from them being TAG/LAG. Adjusting to table conditions is a different matter altogether.

adjusting to table conditions will cause you to play or not play certain hands from certain positions. playing a certain hand in one game makes you no less lag or tag then it does at another one depending on the conditions of the table.

like i said you are not being a nit if you dont raise Q8s from LP against 2 players in the blinds who shove every hand PF. assigning ranges based on position and saying this is LAG or TAG or nit is kinda silly because it is so table dependent.

i tend to agree with what bagzz said about TAG and nit. nits are tight players, TAGs are tight players, nits are passive without the nuts, TAG's are aggressive with their entire range. the actual hand values are somewhat irrelevant because table conditions are dependent

Again, if you're focusing on the ranges I took about 2 seconds on you're completely missing the point.

im personally not focusing on them, im explaining why its useless to think about ranges to say this is playing TAG, or LAG or nitty, because thats all table dependent

maybe your post wasnt directed at me though, not sure

Yeah, and if you're playing in a rock garden and open up your game you aren't playing TAG anymore, you're playing LAG. TAG/LAG etc are just general profiles used to describe how people play. A good player is obviously going to play whatever style is best to exploit the others at his table rather than stick blindly to any specific profile.

I think there is a common misconception that TAG = Good player and everyone should strive to be TAG at all times. It's completely untrue, and what you're describing is just good / solid playing ability, unrelated to the purpose of this thread.

I think good players realize that they may not be good enough to to play LAG and like to stay out of trouble by playing TAG and earning a decent living.
In other words we respect a great LAG player and understand how difficult it is to maintain that level of play without going broke or encountering huge swings.

why do you have to fall under a label? tag? lag? how about winner or loser? i'd rather be a winner who can adjust to table conditions. at a table full of nits/tags/old men, i'm going to lag it up a little.

can't a good player play one way one night, then the other the next?

And there's nothing at all wrong with that. I'm not saying playing TAG is bad or that TAG players aren't good players. I'm just saying that the ability to adjust and change your game vs others is the next step up from playing ABC TAG 100% of the time.

You do have to learn and understand TAG before you can move up to that, though.

You guys are focusing too much on preflop in your discussion. What makes OP correct IMO in pointing out that a lot of posters who think they play TAG but actually don't is their post-flop tendencies.

Online we used to be able to measure this better, with things like Aggression Factor (AF), AF by street, flop/turn/river c-bet frequency and flop c/r %. Live we don't have the stats, but those ideas still apply because they reflect your general approach to the game. A lot of you have way too low an AF past the flop. The A in TAG is just as important as the T. I see this in post after post where turns that should be bet or raised get c/c or called, and rivers don't get bet, etc. If you are going to play a strong range, play it aggressively!

yeah, quibbling over 55vAJ doesn't mean that thinking in ranges is wrong. This post is completely wrong.

i dont even understand what that means ^^^^^

The edges of the range aren't important, but the general idea is. Furthermore, thinking in ranges is absolutely crucial for any decent player.

yes i agree that thinking in ranges is important. thats not my point. my point was assigning a range and saying if you are not playing x range of hands from y position you are not playing a certain style. of course thinking in ranges is important.

heres an extreme example in case my point is not being understood.

player A only has AA when he open limps, otherwise he raises or folds. he limps, everyone folds to us in CO and we have KTs. not playing the hand would not make you a 'nit', or 'not playing TAG', you are just playing optimally due to the table conditions (edit: also contingent that he doesnt go broke with one pair if the pot remains limped)

There's so much good information in the thread I'm referencing below I thought that it might be a nice compliment to this thread.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...wrong-1135099/

Particularly MpethyBridge, there's only 25 posts in the entire thread so it won't take long to get thru.

I would love to improve my game and based on what I've read I'm technically make a mistake by not raising any pp from UTG or any later position. My question is then how do you play these hands at live $1/2? I feel like if you raise to 5bb total (if you raise to $8 total, the odds of this making it through the table with no one calling is almost zero, $10 is sitll probably getting called by at least one person from my experience) with say 22, and the flop comes a dry board with a face card or two. I have no idea what to do next. If I bet out again, I often will get called again, so now I've invested $20 on a hand that most likely not the best hand if they are calling my bet. I can c/f the rest, but this seems like a waste of money then. I guess how do you play PP when an overcard hits and someone calls your CB? This seems like -EV to me, but I'm almost definitely wrong. Same thing if you raise with AJ, people are so afraid of AK at the $1/2 games at casinos I've been to, that they'll just call your raise with AK, so when you do hit the Ace, you're outkicked and you really don't have much information on their betting patterns. Any advice and detailed explanations would be great. Some examples would be much appreciated.

Don't listen to 2p2, play good poker. Which often involves listening to certain posts on 2p2.

If players are limping anything worse than JJ+/AK, and sometimes limping those hands, you exploit them by limping, especially when they are not thinking about what hands you are playing. Everything you read about poker should be weighed against actual game conditions. Set strategies are good because if you spend time on them they should represent a cohesive approach to the game played, but they apply to different situations. Also if you don't know what boards you can bet twice on and get folds, and what boards you shouldn't even bother betting on, you shouldn't be raising any marginal hands preflop. You should spend some time sitting down, going over hand histories and assigning your opponent a range on each street, and think about what parts of those range continue to a bet.

FFS, people. Ike is not saying "this is the right way to play." He is saying that if you're splashing around randomly, but are tighter than the total fish you're playing against, that neither makes you TAG nor gives you a TAG image.

Personally, I intentionally destroy my TAG image, because I want the massive value that 1/2 players will offer with TPGK if they haven't labeled Hero as a nit or a scary maniac (no idea why they don't play back at maniacs, but they don't). I overlimp a lot of speculative hands because the massive value that I get when they hit pretty much pays for the price of all the c/f flops. Playing them gives me the look of just another lottery player and minimizes the boredom of waiting for the hands that I do play more traditionally. It's super exploitable, and definitely not TAG, but it works against the minimally observant players I usually play against.

NOTE: I am NOT saying that this is THE right way to play LLNL either, I'm just saying that I 100% know it's not a TAG image.

While we're on the subject, almost no Villains at 1/2 are TAG either, and almost all posts I see that say "V1: TAG ($245)" I translate as "V1, seemingly thinking player who doesn't play as many hands as the average fish."

nice post garrick, i agree. TAG generalizations are much different live from online and i dont think many players dictated as TAGs online would be TAGs live (not the exact frequencies and such just a general thought, i pretty much agree with how garrick defined it, plays less hands then a fish)

the reason we classify them as TAG is because how many damn classifications are we going to have. we dont have exact stats so we just use this generalization. maybe it means the guy has played a 20/15 style of maybe its more like 12/9. either way hes pretty TAG for the general population and we cant put an exact name on it. hes not LAG, hes not a fish, and hes not a nit. seemingly competent, classified as TAG.




furthermore i really like this thread because its made me think about a bunch of things regarding the subject. i think people may have thought about LAG TAG all wrong. too many people post about how to play LAG or what hands need to be played to play a certain style. in actuality i believe LAG or TAG is an after thought of play. it shouldnt be defined as playing a certain hand in a certain position, but rather how you may appear after playing certain hands in certain spots.

for example, you have a bunch of fish who limp call and fold every flop unless they hit trips or better. how do we beat them? raise everything in position and cbet every flop. our image is now LAG. the actual hand strength becomes useless because we are playing against opponents based on the optimal action. the classification of TAG or LAG is the aftermath of our previous play, not a precursor on how to play or what to play. same goes for playing TAG you may not have the opportunity to play certain hands based on opponents but that does not mean you folding KTo in a certain position means you are not playing TAG.

you should just play every hand as optimally as possible, and the classification will come afterwards.

/drunken rant

Ok, I'm not saying this has to be the only way to play it, but I'd like to know how people are more experienced do play it when the raise all PP's from basically any position when they face overcards...

This is a big subject that could cause a total derail of this thread. Even though inspired by this thread, I'd start new one to discuss this issue. It's definitely threadworthy.