Why does it seem pros play so loose?

i always hear pro players and experienced players give advice by often saying to tighten up their game and not play bad hands.

but watching high stakes poker last night, and other events, ive noticed that many of these pros do in fact play very marginal hands. I particularly noticed Daniel Negraneu (if that's how you spell it) playing questionable hands. hands like K8s, 108s, 76 offsuit. This is in a 9 person or so cash game table!

My question is why do players, like Negraneu, play these less than steller hands?

Well, first off you were watching a hilight real of what was going on. They probbly have their reason for playing the hands, cant tell you exactly what they are because I was not watching the program, but trust me, they know what they are doing lol

well one time there was a raise and a reraise and daniel called with 10 8s, dont know the exact numbers. He can't possibly believe he has the best hand. he must just be hoping to hit a nice a flop, but over time he should lose money playing this hand in this situation, right?

yep, they had to have a good reason for it. from what i watch they do play very tight. they might bluff more than me or take a couple risks here and there but thats why they are pros, they can do that kind of thing and still win consistantly.

its a cash game, if you go busto you reload AND you only realy make any $$ on hands where the other guy thinks they have the nuts (not often with these guys) such as tp on a hidden straight.

High Stakes Poker is probably an abnormal example. Most of the players at the table know each other's games very, very well - they'll be playing the player, not just their cards.

Inscore is also right in pointing out that you're not seeing the whole session: the hands where players take horrible cards to war with their opponents can often make the best television, so they're the ones you'll see.

Keep one other thing in mind too, these players will occasionally want to show down a crappy hand to make sure that they keep getting action on their good hands.

Look at Jerry Buss or, worse, Bob Stupak in the first season of HSP: for his first session Buss played pretty tight, and he got the table's respect. Stupak took it to an extreme - when he finally came into a hand, it was plain for all to see that he had aces.

The pros, on the other hand, will want their opponents to always be thinking "...or he could have garbage" when they're in a hand with them.

Professional poker players tend to give advice by saying to tighten up because it is a much easier style of play. They do not use the same strategies themselves because playing looser requires much more skill and much more post flop play. The advice that they tend to give is just good advice to beginners/non-pros like us.
Daniel Negreanu is somewhat known for the LAG style of play that he has, and it works for him, so he uses it. I have some seen some videos/tips from Daniel, and it seems like he isn't advocating a TAG style of play, but it seemed to be a little bit less LAG type of play, more like Semi-Loose-Aggressive (SLAG?)

True - in terms of advice, it's a lot easier (and safer) to advise someone to play TAG.

To be an effective LAG you need a lot of experience and 'feel' for the game, and that's something you can't teach on a DVD or in a book.

I think pros tell players to play tight and good hands because they want them to learn the basics of the game first. They even explain the importance of good hands, position, etc. The more you play and know the game and is able to adapt to the table, you can open your hand range and play different styles. Look at Gus Hansen, he is a hyper-aggro player that'll play any two cards but he has a video out talking about playing position, playing tight, waiting for good hands in certain situations, etc. Its all basics.

There is such thing has a bad hand or playing a hand wrong, IMO, because there is no set rule on how you have to play. There will be situations against other players where you will want to play only big hands and other times where you can get away with playing marginals like 10/8s. It all depends on a number of factors: your table image, the table, type of game, the players, stack sizes, reads, etc. I usually play a TAG style. It just works for me and I have no problem waiting for my spots getting my money in. But then there are times where I am able to play LAG and change my style up and raise 60% of my hands PF. Its all situational.

With the Dan N hand. Was he in position? Was he getting good odds to call? Who were the other players? Dans style is he is a bit of a loose-aggro, call station. He'll call with marginal hands like 10/8s, but if he flops something big he can take a lot chips off of his opponents. Sometimes it can be a bit hard to put Daniel on a hand.

The pros make these plays for several reasons:

1: They have a read on a player or players and plan on making a move regardless of their hand.

2. To set up future hands. If you have played with the same people over any period of time these variation plays keep your opponents from knowing what you have.

3. To hit a disguised hand on the flop, like a straight or flush or set with two of the cards on the board. If they are playing against someone with a big pair they have a great chance to stack them.

Doyle Brunson's Super System advocates this type of loose play, for me it has never worked, but then again I don't have the reading skills or tell spotting of a pro. I do know several players who play these types of hands profitably almost always in position.

This may shead some light too..
I used to film an outdoors show for 5 years+. To make a 1/2 hour show we needed to shoot at least 8 hours of film,(though we usualy shot twice that) just to get enough usable interesting material to edit down to 26 minutes of film to make a show.

Now think of how many hours you've played where very little happens it terms of exciting pots etc. Would you be interested in watching an hour of that unedited? No....it would be extremely boring indeed. Would watching the pro's only play premium hands be as interesting to the mass veiwers as wel, I think not. It's all done in the editing room by picking and choosing what hands out of ours of film they want you to see to make the pro's look amazing. Interesting shows bring more advertising dollars, get the idea now?

One interesting thing comes from shows like that though... The guys that play any two cards thinking their gonna make the big time and win millions of dollars. Since those guys dont have the money they play freerolls to extremes (Freeroll Whores). They usualy don't last but there's always a few at each that seem to get way too lucky on the flop or chase. Everyone who's seriously played poker has seen their fair share of these idiots...

Good strategy just about always prevails but their is a smaller factor of luck too.... Remember, if it wasn't for luck Phil Helmuth would win every game!

lol, ya i love that hellmuth quote.

thanks for the info guys, very insightful

On TV,they usually show the last part of the tourney and you must play those kinds of cards when the blinds get high.It would take a veryyy long time to show a tourney from start to finish.So we get to see the end,where someone wins.

High stakes poker records the entire session from start to finish. The entire game is aired over the course of the entire season, no hands are cut out during editing. This of course is not the case for the other show such as the WPT or WSOP.

I disagree, I have seen situations where the button has skipped around the table. If they were to show every singe hand, each season would be 3X as long.

Good strategy just about always prevails but their is a smaller factor of luck too.... Remember, if it wasn't for luck Phil Helmuth would win every game![/quote]

LMAO, Adventure is the man.
Seriously though, remember HSP is a cash game where blinds are stagnent and very low compared to stack sizes even after raises. These guys all pros also so Daniel really need not fear guy behind him going all in with his ace jack and he feels he can outplay his oppenent post flop. If I could call my oppenents cards like Daniel, I'd play any 2 also.

I'm pretty sure if these guys were playing against the same guys we play against (even if they played in CC events), they'd be playing much tighter. But when you are playing against other players who are the best in the world, you need to mix it up. When I'm playing online against 50nl opponents I can afford to play an extremely tight game and still get action on my AA hands. On HSP if you only get involved with a few hands all night, it's pretty obvious what you're doing, and no one's gonna pay off your over pair with TPTK.

Meanwhile if they tried this in a low-stakes cash game they'd probably get destroyed, just because the other players will call with top pair making it extremely hard to read them. Do they have 2 pair or a set this time or only top pair? They'd play both of them like the nuts.

This is false, they cut hands out and you even hear in some of the hands something like "I hope this hand makes the show". I know PAD showed all the hands, but other than that I don't know of any poker show that shows 100% of the hands.

against amatuers, the pros can afford to play much looser since they know in the long run they can outplay amateurs on flops to win money with any 2 cards

I'm not so sure if it's loose play or if it's that they so many millions of dollars they can afford to play with marginal hands and expect to make a profit. Just like Daniel he always likes to play small pairs or suited connectors hoping to hit big on the flop. But for some reason it doesn't bother there tournament game because all the pros still place high in those.

I’ve heard the players make comments saying I hope this had makes the cut too, but I also saw ( or more like I heard) Dave Capelin discussing it and he mentioned that if hands were cut out how would they explain the changes in chip stack and that it wouldn’t work out.

Pro's can make you think that they have the best hand just because of their clout it doesnt matter the cards if your a good player especially if you know how to bet and read

...you mean Gabe Kaplan?

I've only seen Series 1 of HSP all the way through, and episodes here and there of the others, but I'm 99.9% sure they cut out the dull hands. Even with the players they have on there, there won't be action every single hand. The button skips around the table too. They may well show every major hand, where there are big changes to people's stacks, but they're not showing the small ones where someone just takes down the blinds.

Poker After Dark, on the other hand, shows every single hand. Which is why it's so tedious for the most part

Thank, yes I did mean Gabe Kaplan LOL and I know that too, just don't know why I wrote dave. Knew I should have googled his name before citing him! Well I may have misunderstood, I don't remember what broght up the topic, but it had something to do with the episodes that he played and Daniel Negreanu took his place in the booth.

Haven't seen those episodes yet so couldn't comment - but for Series 1 at the very least, they're cutting out the dull hands.

you're of course right in that HSP is maaassively cut (not sure how anyone could believe that they only play like 100something hands per season and that a good third of those just happen to be pretty action-packed)

however afaik PAD is cut too, just to a much, much lesser extent. they show very close to all the hands, but not all of them. i mean, they can't predict how long the tournament is going to go on for, but they still manage to keep within the 5 hours of programming per week due to the appropriate cutting of a few hands here and there

ur right and maybe they only include the stuning hands that made it true
or hands that will let you omg why he did that.
example Doyle Brunson winning 2 times wsop with 2 10

*sigh*

Anything goes heads up - winning with T2 is not as special as everyone pretends it is. People have won the Main Event with all sorts of trash hands - Joe Hachem did it with 73o. Doyle's T2 is only famous because he happened to win with it two years in a row.

I don't think it's been mentioned yet, but on HSP they usually are playing with a straddle to get more action going. Also I have heard them mention that a typical "season" of the show is a 20+ hour poker session, so there is plenty of editing.

Something else to think about, if you're watching the final table of a tournament, it's very likely that the players have made a deal to chop the winnings. In that case they'd be playing a lot more loose.

Just some thoughts