Parrots and Bullies

J

JKawai

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I'd like to hear the opinions of people who have played at least tens of thousands of hands on whether purely being a bully at the table is actually a profitable strategy.

By this I mean throwing huge raises out there, or doubling everything the person to your right does.

Every time I have seen somebody like this at the table their stack is huge. Given that C-Range is always considerably smaller than O-Range, particularly when behind a player who raises you 30BBs like it's normal, surely they have positive expectation?

Even if they lose a hand, it probably won't be enough of a loss to cover the amount of bets they will rob from people when they throw out such a huge bet that only monsters will be worth a call. Or maybe it will?

I was just at a $25NL table and there was one of these guys playing 83% of hands - I saw him show 53o at the river on one hand. I raised his preflop call and I KNEW that he would counterraise with a big, chest-thumping raise. I didn't want him to, but he did. He bet $4 to counter my $1.25. This was the one time I got involved with him and he showed AKo at showdown and rinsed me purely because he got a K on the river. This is typical. 83% range and the time I play him he has AKo and wins by chance anyway.

It isn't a strategy I would adopt personally because I don't think that it is Poker - it's just flop lotto/who can shout loudest. It is always obvious that he has absolutely no hand whatsoever because of how big and aggressive and, more importantly, how immediate the raises are - there is never any thought or deliberation behind any of it. But if you're in a room with a suicide bomber - you'd get down on the floor whether he had a point or not, right?

EDIT: I suppose realistically this is a Betteridge headline; if this were a profitable strategy, Poker wouldn't be a game any more and people would have done it decades ago. Still interested to hear people's breakdown analyses of this strategy though, with anecdotal evidence..
 
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MAX101

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I've played both ways, but most of the time I like to play good poker,just seems it's getting harder to do nowadays,but it does make me laugh a bit when I can push someone off a hand with 7 2 and hitting nothing but air and they turn around a let me know they folded 2 pair ,but there are times good poker is just being the bully,but like as if you have a bomber in the room you have to lay low till you can get a hand worth calling with and take a good chunk of their stack ,just seems boring just watching the bullies stack go up and down ,so after about ahalf hour I get bored and just switch tables it's about the only thing you can do to keep yourself from going insane !!!
 
Sil3ntness

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I've played both ways, but most of the time I like to play good poker,just seems it's getting harder to do nowadays,but it does make me laugh a bit when I can push someone off a hand with 7 2 and hitting nothing but air and they turn around a let me know they folded 2 pair ,but there are times good poker is just being the bully,but like as if you have a bomber in the room you have to lay low till you can get a hand worth calling with and take a good chunk of their stack ,just seems boring just watching the bullies stack go up and down ,so after about ahalf hour I get bored and just switch tables it's about the only thing you can do to keep yourself from going insane !!!

Doing it in a cash game is the funnest part. Playing with a nit tight table and stealing the blinds with 27 off suit is hilarious.
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On the original poster's post, some people are just more aggressive than others. I remember Phi lvey saying in a documentary that he doesn't care about bluffing $300,000 or more with air. Takes a certain mindset I guess. He's definitely not scared money. He obviously changes up his style depending on the player, but he's so aggressive that he uses any two cards as if they were pocket aces.
 
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J

JKawai

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I suppose you're right though, if you're confident it's a nit game and you've got enough data on the players, then I guess it makes sense.

So perhaps a new strategy then... play 80% in a 17% game..
 
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