Hi all,

I started playing omaha by ss and 3!/GII with AA+good AKQJ-type hands. Now that I have a roll and more experience, I am experimenting (especially at softer tables) with a LAG strategy, looser pre with more light 3! but still tight post. I think I started to get bored and also gained more confidence so I figured I could mix it up more.

E.g., fire cracker opens MP, hero 3! 33556ds CO to $50, SB cold calls, MP 4! $130, three ways to 258dd and I GII against fire cracker who flopped wrap+fd with Q679xdd.

E.g., overlimp JT964ccdd OTB, BB hold 'em fish raises $25, two calls, I backraise $105 $800 eff. to get it HU and iso, clean up equity and play IP, he calls HU and GII on T93ss.

E.g., 3! T9887ds BB v. BTN and go three ways.

I still 3! about about 65% of my AA too, depending on position suitedness and side cards and whether to invite the blinds or not.

Does anyone else have experience playing a looser strat with success? I know tight is bread and butter but is there room for deviating? My graph is all over the place lately too, still going up overall (lately down) just a lot more peaks and valleys.

Thanks,
DT

Speaking as a "redliner" according to Suhepx, playing "laggy" is about taking profitable aggressive spots others wouldn't, especially in an exploitative sense. I suggest doing this, yes occasionally by isolating pre, but mostly by ramping up postflop raising, and river and turn aggression, not playing awful hands preflop.

But when it comes down to it, don't think in terms of lag/tag. Just play as many hands profitably as you can. Your ability to play loose comes hand in hand with your ability to play poker.

I do suggest experimenting and playing more aggressively and test your comfort zone to break out of playing nitty. Nonetheless this requires actually knowing strategy and understanding how to think about the game.

Hey thanks Inky! Are the sample hands “awful” hands to play? I thought I saw a thread recently advocating 3! double paired hands at some frequency.

I assume most of your postflop aggression is heavily reliant upon blockers?

Sort of, but understanding how to use blockers is not as simple as most think. It's not even just about that street as your previous street action will have to be based around what blockers you have on a future street so even if you're bluffing the right hands on a street, if you don't play aggressively with those hands in an earlier street you won't even get those spots in the first place.

Yes but you pick the wrong spots. I would just try to learn GTO 3b ranges first and start there. I don't play exact ranges but understanding them and having them mostly memorised is a good starting point. You expand your range best when you know what your range is "supposed" to look like to begin with.

All 3 of those hands are bad 3! candidates. I feel like bad pre-flop hand selection is a theme with your posts, but especially in soft, live games small pairs and low-oriented hands are not strong - you should actually fold them more often than you would against more sound opponents.

Its better to 3! More axxxx hands and superior rundowns with no pairs than the hand described.

It's one thing if you 3! Hands like (jj)(tt)9-8, tt99, 9988, jj99, etc headed by the high pair

But very few similar hands headed by 77 make the cut

33/55 certainly does not.

You also need to downgrade rundowns with lower-ranked embedded pairs like the t9887 because of domination and lower equity realization post. A hand like tt987 will be much more profitable.

Thanks to you both, will do. (I got the T9887 hand wrong, it was actually T9877ds, but I still get your point.)

I've said the first part for over a year now to you, Dumbo. You're going to battle in loose games with hands that simply don't fair well in 4+ way pots as yours commonly are.

Your biggest leak is easily fixable because so many hands posted where you got stacked are just folds pre. Stop getting bored and/or going on winning tilt and playing more hands. Focus on playing well pre.

Google "random.org playing cards" and deal yourself 5 cards for quite a bit of time and tell yourself your action in every position with them for different situations.

Or, buy Vision from RIO. It's only 4c ofc but play preflop. See what hands are played and ask yourself, "why is this hand opened here but not there", "why do I flat here and not 3 bet", "why is this hand actually a fold", etc.. Then remember since you play 5c and your opponents don't fold that you should play even tighter pre. I promise you that you'd be astonished at how loose you're playing.

I've done both of those things and found them tremendously helpful.