bob_tiger
Legend
Silver Level
Lately I have been seeing a lot of people asking questions about position and hand ranges and playing low ball, I know zach posted in the lowball thread that and no offense to anyone but most of us who are asking about it don't understand the intentions and strategy behind it. I'm going to take it one step further than zach and explain why we want to play many hands in position.
Positional Advantage- which you might think oh geez, this guy is an effing genius something I don't already know, but in all ceriusness (cool way to spell seriousness) position is really a huge advantage no matter who you play.
Monster Hands disguised/balancing ranges- By playing many hands in position, for example say we raise 47 sooted from the Button and flop comes 3 5 6, our hand is really disguised, since nobody expects us to really have anything on this type of flop. When someone sees you show up with 47 at showdown, they immediatly give your raises less credit no matter how good the player is, so you are going to get paid off more often with your bigger hands, AA, KK etc. I mean this even goes true for me, when I see someone at showdown with a "junky" hand I start giving their raises less credit.
playing deep- when we are deep, we want to be playing a lot of hands against someone who is aso deep in position, I'm going to kind of contradict myself but we don't want to be playing any two, we want hands that play well and easy postflop and have good implied odds, by that I mean we don't want to be calling with a hand like a9off in position because its so hard to play it even in position but say with 89suited i will be more inclined to call, those are the type of hands with monster disguised flops we take stacks from bad players who over play their one pair hands.
stealing blinds- we don't want to be stealing blinds from anyone just because we see it done in a vid, this is why table selecting is so important. For example against someone TAG (there is a difference between tag and nit) raising with a hand like K9off is bad, you might be thinking now why? well the aggressive players will give you a hard time where playing top pair hands becomes hard, because of the reverse implied odds and we really don't know where we stand in some hands so any play becomes -EV or generally borderline. Where as raising saying 67 sooted into TAG players is better because like I mentioned earlier its well disguised and easier to play. Stealing blinds is a small % of our profit so you don't always have to raise from button is what I'm saying against good players.
Now lets talk about passive players in the blinds, into them raising with K9 is ok, why? well because they are so passive that you can value town say when you hit your K and if they try to fight back its usually because they have a hand because they are so passive, then this raise doesnt become so bad.
So what I'm saying is we need a reason to play hands in position and need good post flop skills to be able to apply these strategies instead of doing it just because Negranu tells you too. Perhaps this could be a good serious article but right now I'm just typing this up real quick, but I will probably comeback and edit or have someone help me with it because this is a good topic in my opinion. thoughts and opinions more than welcome, thanks.
Positional Advantage- which you might think oh geez, this guy is an effing genius something I don't already know, but in all ceriusness (cool way to spell seriousness) position is really a huge advantage no matter who you play.
Monster Hands disguised/balancing ranges- By playing many hands in position, for example say we raise 47 sooted from the Button and flop comes 3 5 6, our hand is really disguised, since nobody expects us to really have anything on this type of flop. When someone sees you show up with 47 at showdown, they immediatly give your raises less credit no matter how good the player is, so you are going to get paid off more often with your bigger hands, AA, KK etc. I mean this even goes true for me, when I see someone at showdown with a "junky" hand I start giving their raises less credit.
playing deep- when we are deep, we want to be playing a lot of hands against someone who is aso deep in position, I'm going to kind of contradict myself but we don't want to be playing any two, we want hands that play well and easy postflop and have good implied odds, by that I mean we don't want to be calling with a hand like a9off in position because its so hard to play it even in position but say with 89suited i will be more inclined to call, those are the type of hands with monster disguised flops we take stacks from bad players who over play their one pair hands.
stealing blinds- we don't want to be stealing blinds from anyone just because we see it done in a vid, this is why table selecting is so important. For example against someone TAG (there is a difference between tag and nit) raising with a hand like K9off is bad, you might be thinking now why? well the aggressive players will give you a hard time where playing top pair hands becomes hard, because of the reverse implied odds and we really don't know where we stand in some hands so any play becomes -EV or generally borderline. Where as raising saying 67 sooted into TAG players is better because like I mentioned earlier its well disguised and easier to play. Stealing blinds is a small % of our profit so you don't always have to raise from button is what I'm saying against good players.
Now lets talk about passive players in the blinds, into them raising with K9 is ok, why? well because they are so passive that you can value town say when you hit your K and if they try to fight back its usually because they have a hand because they are so passive, then this raise doesnt become so bad.
So what I'm saying is we need a reason to play hands in position and need good post flop skills to be able to apply these strategies instead of doing it just because Negranu tells you too. Perhaps this could be a good serious article but right now I'm just typing this up real quick, but I will probably comeback and edit or have someone help me with it because this is a good topic in my opinion. thoughts and opinions more than welcome, thanks.
