Quote:
Originally Posted by COCOCHANEL
I haven’t played LHE in 2 years. Has the game totally changed somehow? When did an aggro line with a pocket pair on a trash flop in position in a heads-up pot become “bad.” This is absolutely a spot where I’m charging all opponents max and taking control of the hand (and hopefully the table, in turn). I’m happy to cultivate a super aggro table image to induce passive play in my opponents in future hands, and we have a ton of equity here with our pair of 5’s against “expert’s” range. With a bad runout, we can check back on turn or river, saving a big bet if we have to re-evaluate on later street(s), and otherwise we get max value from expert’s A-x hands when we do, indeed, bet for value on this river. This is a flop raise, AINEC IMO. But...
being aggressive with the middle part of your range in a way ahead/way behind spot has never been good:
1. think about what happens when the opponent has air that he'd barrel off but then you play it this way vs calling.
2. think about what happens when the opponent has a draw or a pure bluff and is an aggressive fellow. your line allows him to present us with a gross decision here or on a later street (when he raises us) where we may fold the best hand.
3. conversely, think about what happens when the opponent has a better hand than ours and your line allows him to reopen the betting and make us pay more money to see showdown.
several of the things you mentioned or implied (taking control of the hand, making a free card raise, disregarding balance, not thinking about opponent's range and how he reacts to our action) are what i'd describe as old-school/sub-optimal strategies/thought processes. a lot of people used to play that way, and a decent number of people still do, but those folks tend in the long run to lose to the folks with more solid, centered, well-rounded strategies.
is it possible to play those sub-optimal strategies and still be a winning player in soft or medium-soft games? absolutely. but it sort of puts a ceiling on your progress and makes it hard to hold your own in tougher games.