Is Cc weak???

I have noticed that in the ha section that every response seems to air on the side of weakness. There are exceptions of course but 90% of answers imo seem to tell you to play t safe bet out draws or to call and see if you hit your draw stuff like that.

I really think a lot of players here are missing such a profitable part of any players game. The maths and odds whilst being important to a players arsenal are no where near as important as the ability to take down dead money or to bluff all streets to take down a massive pot.

if you play the odds and keep your head down and limp through a tourny u will have a blinding itm ratio but people who play like this rarely make the bigger money at the top of mtts.

I would like to make the point that to make serious money at poker the instinct has got to be to win at all costs. To itm or to take small wins willl never make u very profitable, you have to play to win and if you do you will notice a big change in your results imo.

This trend is slowly changing but players who take no risk take no money in tournies it is always the player who put it all on he line that wins.

gl folks

I think to many people(including me) tend to act TAG on replys, if that makes sense. I dont get when someone posts a 5c10c ring hand and someone limps and then Hero limps with like q8 or 64, who cares? Everyone every now and then gets dealt a hand and wants to take a flop.
If someone wants to see a *cheap* flop, do it. Here you will get a bunch of 'why did you call PF? replys.

The HA section usually deals with individual hands. The way any one individual hand should be played is could be considered weak. Thats why I don't even bother posting any one hand and look for session analysis instead.

I rarly if ever post in ha any more because all the responses u get are so standard i dont think i have seen any opinion in there tht made me sit up and think for a long time.

Stef, you touched on something, I've been kind of thinking about lately.

I just started reading Phil Gordon's Little Blue Book. His first hand he discusses is a ring game hand at a $2/$5 table where he has 99 in the SB. The button raises 4x BB after 2 limpers. Gordon is only getting 2 to 1 but calls out of position and flops a boat. Then plays it like a champ, getting the button with QQ to put all of his money in.

If it were me, I'd probably fold the 99 because of the big raise and I'd be out of position. Especially when I only have $2 in the pot. Then I'd have missed out on a boat and an opportunity to stack someone. But I'd have made the correct preflop read.

For me though, it seems like even when I do take risks in a tourney I get screwed. So either way I lose. lol

First up I don't think you can categorise the forum as having a style or approach. There's huge variety in terms of skill and aggression/passivity on here.

That said, here's some responses,


I agree it's an important part of the game but I absolutely disagree that it's more important than the maths and odds . Bluffing and correct betting against dead money are important. But they are not as important as a game that is based on a solid foundation of play built on a deep understanding of odds (pot and implied). Great play often involves making the unusual play but is wasted without the vast majority of the time when solid "regulation" play is required. All of the literature (from successful pros) starts with an understanding of this. Even Gus Hansen's success is based on an understanding of the odds although he uses it in a very different way.

This is part of the problem with HHs, they are context free and therefore the default play is usually the recommended one. If the same hand occurred with an hour's context then the advice would often be different. So much in poker "depends".

Win at all costs doesn't mean gambling. It means picking your spots and by turn being passive, aggressive, unpredictable, solid and loose as the situation dictates. Any blanket statement about correct play is again glossing over so many of the variables that occur in any MTT.

A rock will his share and so will someone who is uniformly aggressive, but the person who knows when to switch between the two will win a whole lot more

Win at all costs doesn't mean gambling. It means picking your spots and by turn being passive, aggressive, unpredictable, solid and loose as the situation dictates. Any blanket statement about correct play is again glossing over so many of the variables that occur in any MTT.


I understand your point and yes everyone has to have the base of play but i would love to see some hhs tht assume good basis as many have tht here. There is a whole world of poker after you have the basis down and it is so much harder than learning the basics. Would love to see even if it is a set of hands showing theories past pot odds and math or the standard hands tht we all play on a daily basis.

Im not saying i have basics down completly of course we all learn as we play and read but would love to see some tht are moving on a bit and more complicated theories .

Not wishing to give it the big-un here, but I kind of know what you mean. I've had plenty of hands where I've made very unorthodox plays but not posted them because they require to much context and could easily (and probably correctly) challenged based on the information presented.

These hands are almost always based on some very specific piece of information which is extremely difficult to articulate out of context. It usually comes from watching someone for a long period of time and "knowing" that there is no way on earth that they can call the bet you are about to make. Your own cards at this point are irrelevant because it is inconceivable that their range and skill-level will combine to enable the call.

I'd still be very careful about overstating this but I kind of know what you mean.

Not to suggest anything, but I think the majority of us are beginner poker players. Some of us have problems laying down big PP in situations that demands it. I think that's the reason you see most of us asking questions like

"QQ UTG, Villain reraises big!! What do you do?"

Doesn't make for very complicated theory stuff, but it's a problem newbies like me face everyday when grind out a decent bankroll. In other words, I'm learning and trying to understand the deeper theories of poker.

For people such as I, mastering the basic TAG strategy is a struggle for me at the moment. More complicated theories would just fly over my head. Still, no one is stopping any of the more advance players from posting more theory heavy stuff.

Maybe you can be the first to start Stef. Get the ball rolling and I'm sure the rest will follow.

For people such as I, mastering the basic TAG strategy is a struggle for me at the moment. More complicated theories would just fly over my head. Still, no one is stopping any of the more advance players from posting more theory heavy stuff.

Maybe you can be the first to start Stef. Get the ball rolling and I'm sure the rest will follow.[/quote]

cc will always have the newbies and the questions from them and the older members will always help. I was never suggesting that those posts are not what cc is about it is just there are few members who know a lot and would help to hear how they think on some of the tougher strategies.

as for starting i am thinking hehe

You better think fast! I'm waiting...

From what I've read from the threads you're involved in, I think you're a knowledgeable player. Someone with a good insight to the game.

So, come on now, don't be shy. I'll try and get involved, but I'm sure my answer will be pretty rudimentary.

Obv you have not read my Channeling Gus Hansen thread. No passivity in that hand. I see some agro HA on here. Not everyone is a nit.

I know where Steve is coming from as many of the responses to threads take the textbook approach or rely on PokerTracker and other programs.

I also know that I play a bit differently in forum events as I tend to play it more by the book. Who wants the hand posted when you called a large bet with 8-5 suited?

While the numbers, stats, rankings, and other scientific data is important, there are a zillion intangibles in every situation. From the movie "Risky Business": "Somtimes you just have to say what the f***"

Many of us here know how to play poker. Believe it or not guys, I think I know how to play poker. That said I have a few replies about this.

-I have thought for a long time that the authors of most of the poker books may have got scared along their way and decided to put forth their methods in an effort to get the donks that blew them out of the water to play a more predictable form of poker where they (the authors) would stand a chance. There was a post recently (sorry, not gonna look for it) that suggested that some of those 'donks' were in fact serious, excellent players putting on the donkey suit.

- In matters of advice, it is usually 'do what I say, don't do what I do'. There is so much knowledge in this group of players that if we all played our 'A' game, we would all tie every time. And yes, me, the self proclaimed FRW include myself as having an 'A' game capable of competing with any of you. When I do what I say, and DON"T DO those things I know I should not be doing, I do very well.

-Rock Paper Scissors. Aggressive beats passive, super aggressive beats aggressive, passive beats super aggressive.

I may rant a bit more in a bit.....

when you post a hand the basic concept is to reply in it in a TAG style because we can not answer it any other way because we are not sitting at the table and don't know how play had been up to that point. If someone says yea guy was loose, ok that really doesnt help us decide if we can make a move or not or really anything. Just saying someone is loose or tight can not dictate our next move. The only logical way to answer the hand history is to go by odds and stuff.

now me Im very very far from a Tag player, im very very veryx1,00000000 LAG. I like picking out weak plays and making people play, I generally bet anytime some limps before me and try to take the dead money regardless of what I hold. BUT these are all advanced strategies that we can not put into a hand history, these are things that have to be done with timing and stuff.

guess what im trying to say is you have to answer a hand history TAG style, maybe that is weak but thats only way to do It I see.


I railed one of our users awhile back and noticed a guys was limping the small blind over and over on him and I wrote in the forum "next time he does that shove he will fold". The user did this and of course he folded, I wouldn't of been able to do that if I hadn't been watching that table and picked up on that tendency.

ok lets see


cashgame or tourney?
stack sizes?
his range?
how often does he raise?
how much did you raise?


all these have to be answered 1st before we can even start to answer this.

Sometimes there IS a correct play.

I think this is a key concept. Success in tourneys is a lot about switching gears at the right moment.

In the course of a long MTT, I will play TAG, LAG, and even Weak-Tight at times.

However, if I am posting in HA I will usually be thinking default style (TAG in my case).

Im a little late posting this but I just wanted to say that I totally understand where Stef is coming from, we could all learn a bit more from each other if we can take the time, poker is best learned from experience...but if you are having trouble grasping theories, and learning a lot of strategy, then having someone tell you, or explain it to you can help tremendously. I for one have been playing for over and year and I am just now learning things that I didnt even know about a year ago. I want everyone to look to CC for a learning experience plus a great place to meet some really cool people in the process.

Tag is what sells books becuase it is easy to understand and teach. You can buy any cheap or expensive poker book and learn TAG style in 15 minutes. You can pick it up quickly and start to do OK right away. You will get those answers to hand analysis because it is usually the easiest way to respond. I got alot of neg rep when I started answering HA questions from the LAG perspective and never could figure out from whom (never signed the rep). So apparently some only want to hear from the TAG perspective.

Poker has the Circle of life. TAG beats passive, super TAG beats TAG, maniac beats super TAG, passive beats maniac. If a tag starts to just call, then I need to worry about slowplays. A passive player starts raising then I know he has a monster.

Problems when looking at just one hand:
- Traps are not seen or set up in one hand. I end up putting those in the playing poker or strategy sections to show more than one hand. That way you see the set-up hands and the trap going off.
- You are asking for advice on one hand only. Poker players are never suppose to look short term. It is always tracked BB/100 hands or over 1-5k hand history to see how you are doing. Monster get beat by monster. You get both end of it over time.
- It is still gambling. You can always make the safe play based on math. The art and psychology of poker will make you do things that can only come from experience and comfort zone. Some people don't ever feel comfortable pushing all-in on a stone cold bluff where others do it every 5th hand. Sometimes you have to do what your gut is telling you.

Okay, let's ramble.

First, you appear to have your definitions confused. 'Weak' does not equal 'tight'. How you can characterise someone who consistently makes mathematically correct plays as 'weak', I don't really know. Sure, a good LAG can make more money than an equivalently good TAG in most cases, but this doesn't make the TAG, who is playing profitably, 'weak'.

Second, a lot of this is an issue of context. If someone makes a play that isn't the norm and posts about it, I want to know why they were doing what they were doing. If someone limps UTG with 96s, I would want to know why, and if the poster doesn't explain why I'm going to call them on it and at least ask for an explanation or suchlike.

What happens most of the time though is someone will just post a hand with maybe a sentence of irrelevant stuff and leave it at that. Considering they haven't attempted to provide any reasoning for the abnormal play, I and others can only asssume that the poster considers their play to be sound. When someone posts a 96s UTG limp hand, doesn't explain why they limped UTG with it, and doesn't even ask for opinions on preflop play because he's too concerned with "Should I call this river bet?" or whatever, it's pretty worrying.

The problem is again that in most cases there's no justification or reasoning behind it. If you ever decide to take a certain course of action in poker simply because you're 'bored' or you 'want to take a flop', well, do I need to say it's not exactly a profitable and effective way of thinking?

I guess what I'm getting at is that in order for HA hands to avoid going down the obvious route, more detail is needed in a lot of the threads here. If you don't want a lecture on not limping 96s preflop and you're posting a hand in which you limped 96s preflop, either justify it (well, try to ^^) or admit to your error in the OP and ward the future conversation away from it.

Playing a $11 SNG, 9 seater, i limp from 4th position with KJ(BB is 150). I will get a bunch of 'you shouldnt of called preflop' replys.

because you shouldn't duh, you should be raising or folding. what do you gain by limping with that hand OOP?

Your right, you should have raised.

I also agree that there is a whole lot more TAG players than the rest of the styles combined (lag, passive, maniacs etc.). Therefore, you will get TAG answers from them. They will only tell you what they would do in that situation. I know of only a handful of self proclaimed LAGs and maybe one or two maniacs that post here. I think we convince any passive players to change their style, so there are very few of them here (that is why they are at CC, to get better).

...that's because according to general wisdom you shouldn't have.

in fact, in a donkngo when stacks are so limited and you're done within an hour, i can't really think of an argument for ever open limping KJ in MP. once you get to 50/100 you should pretty much never be open limping at all, actually.

....but we digress. :/

Limping isnt bad. Seeing flops isnt bad.

im in 6th position. Blinds 10/20, i have 3k. I limp with 64o, will get a bunch of you shouldnt of limped preflop.

its fine to take a flop with any hand when your deepstacked.

i'm not saying i agree or disagree with this (that's a discussion for another topic), but i don't really know why you're saying this. one minute you're talking about 75/150 in a donkngo, the next you're talking about 10/20 with 3k effective stacks. world of difference.

Same point, people here give the textbook TAG answer in fear of being wrong or getting flamed(i give it too, im a pussy).