What does metagame mean?

Hey guys. I've been reading most of the threads on CC and playing lots of poker and been constantly improving and killing NL10. I've got a good grasp of most of the things that are talked about on these forums and am about to move up to NL25 but there's one thing that bugs me. I have absolutely no clue what metagame means. I see the advanced members constantly mentioning this in their posts and am really curious what this is referring to.

metagame is like the overall picture of your game. Its the game played above the imidiate cards in your hand.

i.e. you are playing tight but want to get more action and value for your hands (which are premium cards) so you play a few very loose hands when you have some position and its cheap to do so.

You then showdown a monster which is made from thise crap cards.. people see this a couple of times and start to think of you as a loose player. The loosen their range against you... they stop thinking that every time you raise that you have the nuts.. and hey presto you gain value for your hands and generate moe action than you had before.

Thats just one example of metagame but I think it gives you the jist of it.

Thanks, that makes alot of sense. Let's say the reverse were to happen. Say someone was planning on playing a very loose style at a table and picked up aces, they made a big preflop raise and everyone folded. Then they showed the aces, is this also considered metagame? Because they're putting the idea out there that when they raise, they have a good hand. But then they can take advantage of this in the future by improving their chances of bluffing successfully?

Yes thats an example of metagame.

Also things like mixing up your calling and rasing range.. If you only ever raise post flop with TPTK or raise preflop with premium hands then you are effectively telling everyone roughly what you have.

An example of meta game there would be to call with a few raising hands and raise with a few calling hands.. not 50:50, just a few so that people cannot so easily put you on a narrow range of hands, because its easily exploitable.

hmm

i dont even have a clue what metagame is please enlighten me on this one still gonna read it:icon_sant

msjoker999 said:

i dont even have a clue what metagame is please enlighten me on this one still gonna read it:icon_sant

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Read the posts above.. how did that no answer?

spranger said:

Thanks, that makes alot of sense. Let's say the reverse were to happen. Say someone was planning on playing a very loose style at a table and picked up aces, they made a big preflop raise and everyone folded. Then they showed the aces, is this also considered metagame? Because they're putting the idea out there that when they raise, they have a good hand. But then they can take advantage of this in the future by improving their chances of bluffing successfully?

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Right, works that way round, too.
Effective in MTTs as well.
I think Metagame means following hands / sessions / tables, too.
E.g. in Ring games it might help blurring your overall range and give you an edge, there.

another example is that when people are playing each other a lot, so they know each others styles so well, you do random out of the blue stuff that isn't your normal line so you aren't so readable.