Reversing your image

You hear a lot about the importance of playing with an understanding of what others percieve of you.

Confusing your opponents in a poker game makes it much easier to manipulate other players, because-in their confusion-they're less likely to attack if they have an advantage and more likely to give you extraweak calls when you have them beat.

I know that most of the time I have the tight image but my experience has shown that other tight players will do an obvious crazy play to loosen up their image then go right back to the tight style (you aint fooling me )

I just want to keep my oppts on their toes. Any suggestions other than the obvious?

This is taken out of Killer Poker No limit.

Create a bluffing hand example 72s or even 7h2h. And when you get that hand you will play it exactly like you play AA. This does two things, helps you open up your range a little and make sure bluffing enough if you are a rock, also if you get caught people will drastically change their thinkings about your play.

Mixing it up is always good strategy, imo. Too predictable and you can be easily beat or bluffed. Tight is one thing, but predictably tight can be very costly.

I like to show myself as a very tight player, and then once i get that image, i start to bluff to take down pots. But don't bluff too often other wise they might catch on.

a couple things that I do, but I'm not the tightest of players, lol. I do understand/know when I need to tighten up.

Do all of these when you have position when your stack is up somewhat

In a heavily limped/numerous limpers pot with position I will at least 4 bet the blinds with any 2 coordinated cards, it could be 34 offsuit. Your best bet is to try to make it suited, but I say just try to make it at least somewhat coordinated so you have outs. Of course since you raised you gotta c-bet unless its for lack of better words "those flops" where the texture of the flop wouldnt be the smartest to bet on if a ton of people decide to call your 4 bet. this is in essence doing what steve said with aces.

reraise marginal raises preflop in position, especially if its a min raise and the player hasn't shown down that he's the type of player that will min raise something like aces. 3 bet that Raise, many times you'll be able to pick up preflop. I like to try to do this with hands I like not necessarily pairs, something like qj suited would be ideal here, I think thats ideal for the situation I posted above also because even though your kinda bluffing these are the types of hands you want in multiway pots.

With position I'll raise any marginal bet on the flop especially if there are draws out there. I'll check the flop and raise any marginal bet on the turn with position.



If you wanna get real funky 3 raise button bets on the flop when ever you hit anything on the flop or with strong draws, and follow that up with a bet on the turn. When you do this its best that you actually do this with a real hand first and you show down because you don't want no one raising you with air here when your check raising, checkraising alone represents a good hand so you definitely don't want someone reraising air. You don't want to be doing this on someone with an ego donk because he'll reraise you just because and you'll never know where your at. Save this type of play for players that don't overvalue one pair. Thing is though if you showdown the first time checkraising the goods your set to do it again with respect, if you do it with air and you don't get the player to fold than you just might be set to get paid good when you checkraise with a real hand next time around.






2 main things to understand when your doing this IMO.

1. You gotta consider how much chips you plan on wasting (just incase your antics don't get someone to fold). I kind of like to make a quota of how much chips I will waste when I am about to do this. For example maybe you have a 60 g stack and I'll decide I'm not gonna go over the 6-8 g limit of donking. So I'll consider how I want to divide those chips up along the community cards to get my best chance of making the player fold. Usually if your raising and the person isn't that strong a person will fold. So when you start to reach that quota you'll realize its a good chance you probably aren't going to get to player to fold, nows the good part when you cant get them to fold you get to show down how much of a donkey you look like.

2. Understand who your playing with. You wanna be making these moves on people they may actually work on. You don't wrestle with someone who you automatically know is going to showdown with you. The key is you don't want to purposely show down an idiotic hand. The best scenario is if you got someone to fold to your raises every single time, no matter how much you are donking you should want a fold every time because thats only profitable to your stack. Obviously a fold every time is not going to occur, but pick your players and don't get into a battle with someone that will try to outplay you when your trying to outplay, you wanna make these moves on people that won't try to outplay you, yet they'll just call down, in other words passive players. You can do it to aggressive players, but once they start reraising your reraises you probably need to get away, because calling off some of your chips in a reraise is NOT being aggressive. You want to be controlling the aggression at ALL times when your doing this once you lose the control get away.

gl, these are just some of the things I do hope it helps, and oh yeah, when you get real hands make sure you try to play them similarly to how you donked so you still look like the previous donk you were

Limp your way into more pots, pretend you are Gus Hansen, have some fun, once in a while you will connect and everyone will be in awe and call you a donkey, then be a nit again.
1,000 posts for me now, GN all.

heres an example of something I said above did it in a tourney today:

** Hand # 2271273487 starting - 2008-11-16 23:41:38
** $3k GUARANTEE[2258445]:Table 9 [Multi Table Hold 'em] (200.00|400.00 NL - MTT) Real Money

poor-1 sitting in seat 1 with 3955.00
philthebear sitting in seat 2 with 3200.00
hans6969 sitting in seat 3 with 8165.00
going4gutgut sitting in seat 4 with 6920.63
young_gung sitting in seat 5 with 12658.00
paskalaikka sitting in seat 6 with 6237.50
Cashman19 sitting in seat 7 with 15972.50[Dealer]
ESXFCT sitting in seat 8 with 18272.50
mercic sitting in seat 9 with 5281.25
shokker1 sitting in seat 10 with 11587.50
ESXFCT ante'd - 15.00
mercic ante'd - 15.00
shokker1 ante'd - 15.00
poor-1 ante'd - 15.00
philthebear ante'd - 15.00
hans6969 ante'd - 15.00
going4gutgut ante'd - 15.00
young_gung ante'd - 15.00
paskalaikka ante'd - 15.00
Cashman19 ante'd - 15.00
ESXFCT posted the small blind - 100.00
mercic posted the big blind - 200.00

** Dealing cards to young_gung: 5c, Qh
shokker1 called - 200.00
poor-1 called - 200.00
philthebear folded
hans6969 folded
going4gutgut called - 200.00
young_gung raised to 800.00
paskalaikka folded
Cashman19 folded
ESXFCT folded
mercic folded
shokker1 called - 800.00
poor-1 folded
going4gutgut called - 800.00

** Dealing the flop: 5h, Ah, Qs
shokker1 checked
going4gutgut checked
young_gung bet - 1500.00
shokker1 folded
going4gutgut called - 1500.00

** Dealing the turn: 7c
going4gutgut checked
young_gung bet - 2500.00
going4gutgut went all-in - 4605.63
young_gung called - 4605.63
going4gutgut shows: Js, Ad

** Dealing the river: 4c
young_gung wins 15261.26 from the main pot



I was just trying to see if I could win the pot here thats why I didnt particularly decided to coordinate my cards when I did this. If someone comes overtop here preflop I clearly fold. I got lucky here and flopped 2 pair, lol thats the good part of raising dumb hands--hitting hands your not supposed to. I had a tight image up to this, I wanted to see what they'd let me get away with.

I really like to mix it up... keep them guessing!

Depending on the type of play (tournament versus ring) I will start either tight or loose and then occasionally switch it up... if everyone is calling me because they think I am playing everything I will tighten up for a while and really take my time making calls. Although i have found it is easier to go from a a tight image to loose than the other way around both can work. Sometimes I even act like a calling station... just to see if I can get other people to change thier strategy. I think sometimes getting other people to switch thier play can be very effective, especially if they are not particularly comfortable with it. I think strategy REALLY has to depend on everyone else at the table, which is why tight to loose probably works a bit better because it gives you a chance to really watch others and gauge thier style and then respond to it.

I actually love to be called a donk, it means that people will stop taking me seriously and I can get in under the radar! When I am donking it up (ok not REALLY tooooo donkey but yanno... donkish LOL) I show more to make themm think I am a lotto player or at least a noob and then tighten waaaaaaaaaaaay up. Of course, you gotta remember to watch your stack and don't make toooo many moves that is just going to result in your getting knocked out... rings games make this a bit easier. I find that I always seem to do better after I have lost a little and also, I generally like to go in with the table min on ring games, especially if I expect to play the donk card.

Either way i think esperimenting with different styles of play is good in generally becasue I feel that it makes you a stronger player overall and will, in the end, give you A LOT more options on the felt.