Whats up with all the aggression?

Could be just me but after watching the Sunday storm anniversary last night and even playing in it, i noticed that it seems as though everyone is totally aggressive all the time and you see guys shoving with just about anything you can imagine.

And ive noticed it in tourneys generally.

Its become close to impossible to be lucky enough to be sitting to the right of a total passive fish. the second time you try to steal they snap shove anything.

Whats up with that? It seems as though playing hyper aggro and fearless is becoming more of a trend lately compared to a few years ago.

Anyone agree here? Lemme know what you think. ty

vinylspiros said:

Could be just me but after watching the Sunday storm anniversary last night and even playing in it, i noticed that it seems as though everyone is totally aggressive all the time and you see guys shoving with just about anything you can imagine.

And ive noticed it in tourneys generally.

Its become close to impossible to be lucky enough to be sitting to the right of a total passive fish. the second time you try to steal they snap shove anything.

Whats up with that? It seems as though playing hyper aggro and fearless is becoming more of a trend lately compared to a few years ago.

Anyone agree here? Lemme know what you think. ty

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Every article out there hammers in that you have to play aggro to win. A fair few just teach ABC TAG strategy but a lot focus on playing laggy to exploit tagfish, so a lot of people are playing lag and just suck at it.

Vs those kinds of players it's probably best to play a merged TAG range where you bet for thin value a lot but don't bluff ever.

I think what you're seeing is LAGs doing what they do. I think normally TAGs would offset and slow down some of the LAG players. However, I think the problem might be that the "TAGs" don't really play like TAGs. At least not very many in my opinion. We expect LAGs to throw a lot of chips at a lot of pots with a wide range of hands. While the tight aggressive players seem to discriminate a little more in their hand selection, once they do pick up a "suitable" hand they appear to get as carried with their chips as the LAGs do. In fact, in a lot of instances, the LAGs seem to show more fold discipline than do the TAGs. LAGs seem to be aware of the strength, or lack of strength, of a lot of the hands that they play. Of course they are going to fire out a bet to see where they stand. They may bluff to try to push someone off a draw or get them to lay a better hand down because that is the only way to win the pot with the cards they hold. And that is the whole point, to win the pot. Sometimes they get trapped. Sometimes they're wrong when they think one more bet might win it for them. And sometimes they just plain get carried away. But quite often, they seem to have a sense for when they are beat. On the other hand, a lot of so called tight/aggressive players will wait for a strong starting hand, then play it as if they will never see another one. They seem to think that A-K is invincible. I have seen more chips lost with A-K then any other starting hand. The point is that when "loose" players are throwing a lot of chips at a lot of hands, and "tight" players are throwing all their chips at one, it's sometimes hard to tell them apart. All you see are the chips flying

none of what you said is true, fish are everywhere.

duggs said:

none of what you said is true, fish are everywhere.

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Sure do. It wont be online poker if there isnt a fish! Just not possible!

i think everyones been reading a little bit too much and its screwed up even the way fishes plays.
Overanalysis leads to paralysis

gotta play it differently sometimes to get ahead..kno when to push the hammer down..i like to start out a bit loose fishy fishy and then tighten up. more fun imo.

Maybe due to the HUGE field in the Sunday Storm? To build up a big enough stack to final table I imagine you have to either get an amazing run of good cards or play stupidly aggressively and hope to get lucky. I doubt waiting for premium hands will get you much further than a min cash mostly.

micromachine said:

Maybe due to the HUGE field in the Sunday Storm? To build up a big enough stack to final table I imagine you have to either get an amazing run of good cards or play stupidly aggressively and hope to get lucky. I doubt waiting for premium hands will get you much further than a min cash mostly.

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Darwin Moon would disagree. Anyway if people are shoving really light then just tighten up and be ready to go all the way with hands like 9/9+ or A/J+

Yoshimiii said:

Darwin Moon would disagree. Anyway if people are shoving really light then just tighten up and be ready to go all the way with hands like 9/9+ or A/J+

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yea thats what i do. i mean i dont have any other choice than to maybe cal with 9-10 suited which i dont do cause thats not how i roll.

micromachine said:

Maybe due to the HUGE field in the Sunday Storm? To build up a big enough stack to final table I imagine you have to either get an amazing run of good cards or play stupidly aggressively and hope to get lucky. I doubt waiting for premium hands will get you much further than a min cash mostly.

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yea definitely cause of the sunday storm. it attracted alot of people. over 100 thousand. i dont think ive ever been in that big of tourney before EVER.

Sometimes the thing you see in those tourneys are surreal.

For example guy raises 3x under the gun with 10-7s guy in bb reraises 10x with AA. UTG calls. flop comes 2 6 7. BB raises 75% of pot ,UTG calls . turn 7, BB shoves ,UTG calls river 10.

Id seriously break a window if i was the poor guys with the aces. I mean what kind of passive aggression is it to call 10X pre with 10 7? its just like uhhhhhh.

Fish are fish though. Guy in a cash game last game last night called my KK shove with 72o so yeah, at least he lost hand though

IntenseHeat said:

I think what you're seeing is LAGs doing what they do. I think normally TAGs would offset and slow down some of the LAG players. However, I think the problem might be that the "TAGs" don't really play like TAGs. At least not very many in my opinion. We expect LAGs to throw a lot of chips at a lot of pots with a wide range of hands. While the tight aggressive players seem to discriminate a little more in their hand selection, once they do pick up a "suitable" hand they appear to get as carried with their chips as the LAGs do. In fact, in a lot of instances, the LAGs seem to show more fold discipline than do the TAGs. LAGs seem to be aware of the strength, or lack of strength, of a lot of the hands that they play. Of course they are going to fire out a bet to see where they stand. They may bluff to try to push someone off a draw or get them to lay a better hand down because that is the only way to win the pot with the cards they hold. And that is the whole point, to win the pot. Sometimes they get trapped. Sometimes they're wrong when they think one more bet might win it for them. And sometimes they just plain get carried away. But quite often, they seem to have a sense for when they are beat. On the other hand, a lot of so called tight/aggressive players will wait for a strong starting hand, then play it as if they will never see another one. They seem to think that A-K is invincible. I have seen more chips lost with A-K then any other starting hand. The point is that when "loose" players are throwing a lot of chips at a lot of hands, and "tight" players are throwing all their chips at one, it's sometimes hard to tell them apart. All you see are the chips flying

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I hear you man and this dos make alot of sense.But what i am describing is beyong being a "LAG" player(actually knowing what you are doing).

Im talking about button raising with junk and bb shoving with worse junk and button calling him off and winning by catching a 2 on the river with their k2 and the bb is sitting on j-10.

I mean you payed 10$ to play the damn thing. whats going through your head when our making this decisions. REALLY? like REALLY REALLY?

Shortly after making my last post I was at a table where the play seemed to illustrate the point I was trying to make above.

I open raised to 3x from UTG+1 with A-J suited. The player to my left, that I would have considered to be tight, having only volunteered chips into one pot prior to that, raised it to 7.5x with pocket 9s. The player to his left, that I would have considered to be loose/aggressive, raised it to 16.5x with A-Q offsuit. Action folded back around to me. I folded, expecting to see a shove and a call and to big pairs get turned over. The tight player just called. When the flop came A-K-7, the tight player checked to the loose player who bet half the pot. The tight player then raised it to 200 chips shy of putting the loose player all-in. The loose player shoved. The tight player called. I don't remember what fell on the turn or river. I was still stuck on the flop. Just... Wow!

I have to assume that the tight player was trying to make a stand against the loose player that had been generating a lot of action at the table. Most of the chips being passed around the table seemed to be flowing through him. I thought he got a little carried away with A-Q before the flop. The tight player apparently failed to consider that even though loose players might play weak hands, it doesn't mean they don't get dealt stong hands too.

This was a table with one obvious LAG generating a lot of action. The options for the rest of the table were to play back or let him run over the table. At a table with more than one loose/aggressive player generating action, raising and reraising, it might seem like chips are flying from all directions as the other players at the table try to make a stand against the LAGs.
Not to mention the fact that a lot of players just don't know how to get out of the way. So the choice a lot of players face when they get dealt a strong hand is to play it against half the table, which severely reduces your chances of winning the pot, or make huge bets and raises to try to get people out of the pot so that you can see a flop heads up.

micromachine said:

Fish are fish though. Guy in a cash game last game last night called my KK shove with 72o so yeah, at least he lost hand though

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i hear ya man. fish will be fish but i admit that although they are fish,they can sometimes make the game difficult no matter how good you are cause you see them hitting their magical hands more often than one would expect.

vinylspiros said:

I hear you man and this dos make alot of sense.But what i am describing is beyong being a "LAG" player(actually knowing what you are doing).

Im talking about button raising with junk and bb shoving with worse junk and button calling him off and winning by catching a 2 on the river with their k2 and the bb is sitting on j-10.

I mean you payed 10$ to play the damn thing. whats going through your head when our making this decisions. REALLY? like REALLY REALLY?

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Okay, I get it. You're not just talking about LAGs. You're talking about the PB/GL donkeyfarts. I can't tell you what these guys are thinking. Their whole strategy seems to be play bad/get lucky. I used to think this was just a carryover from players being aclimated to playing freerolls and having what I call the "freeroll mentality", which is an excuse for their poor play. If you questioned their play, they would point out that "it's only a freeroll". But then they would use the same excuse for their play in buy in tourneys. "It's only $1", "It's only $2", and so on. But I've played $20 tourneys where you see the same thing. At that point, I don't question it. It's a combination of being to angry to bother and the fact that it's your money. If you want to waste it on bad play, then that's your business.

The good news is that these guys usually don't make it very deep into tourneys with that kind of play. The bad news is they're going to get lucky and take out some good players before they go. Again, the upside is that if you play quality hands, you likely to be way ahead of these guys when you do play against them. But then again, bad players get dealt good hands sometimes too. And even if you are ahead, we all know that the best hand doesn't always win. Idealy you wan't players to be getting their chips in bad against you. But that's not what you're thinking about when they get lucky on you. In fact, it pisses me off even when my hands do hold up. I feel insulted that someone would play such garbage against me.

Just keep it tight. Usually, if you can last the first half an hour, you will see play settle down considerably. You will still run into the occasional donk that manages to make it through. But remember you're not gambling. You're playing poker. All you can do is get them in good. And if you can manage to get them in with the best of it, then those donks become the best source of chips you can find.

IntenseHeat said:

Okay, I get it. You're not just talking about LAGs. You're talking about the PB/GL donkeyfarts. I can't tell you what these guys are thinking. Their whole strategy seems to be play bad/get lucky. I used to think this was just a carryover from players being aclimated to playing freerolls and having what I call the "freeroll mentality", which is an excuse for their poor play. If you questioned their play, they would point out that "it's only a freeroll". But then they would use the same excuse for their play in buy in tourneys. "It's only $1", "It's only $2", and so on. But I've played $20 tourneys where you see the same thing. At that point, I don't question it. It's a combination of being to angry to bother and the fact that it's your money. If you want to waste it on bad play, then that's your business.

The good news is that these guys usually don't make it very deep into tourneys with that kind of play. The bad news is they're going to get lucky and take out some good players before they go. Again, the upside is that if you play quality hands, you likely to be way ahead of these guys when you do play against them. But then again, bad players get dealt good hands sometimes too. And even if you are ahead, we all know that the best hand doesn't always win. Idealy you wan't players to be getting their chips in bad against you. But that's not what you're thinking about when they get lucky on you. In fact, it pisses me off even when my hands do hold up. I feel insulted that someone would play such garbage against me.

Just keep it tight. Usually, if you can last the first half an hour, you will see play settle down considerably. You will still run into the occasional donk that manages to make it through. But remember you're not gambling. You're playing poker. All you can do is get them in good. And if you can manage to get them in with the best of it, then those donks become the best source of chips you can find.

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yep. nothing better than playing in MTT's and running deep. the play cools down. the morrons are less and the play is more solid. when u shove your AK you dont see too many calls with hand's less than AQ or pocket tens.

and the game suddenly feels totally different. It's the waves of stupidity you have to overcome to reach this level that have become enormous lately making it even harder to reach the desired position in the tourney.

I think u r correct in the aggressiveness being greater now. Why, I don't know. Some cash tables especially have aggressive players.

People watch too much poker on TV then think they are a pro

NeverEnough said:

People watch too much poker on TV then think they are a pro

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+1

I've been grumbling a great deal about this in other threads.

When there are only a few donks, the donks are likely to get a well deserved drubbing. But when three quarters of every table consists of the clueless, it's almost impossible to make headway. They won't fold, they'll shove if they have two hole cards, and it only takes one donk out of the four or five at your table to get lucky to put you and your high pocket pair out.

It's like the proverbial question of who would win a battle between a horse-sized duck and a hundred duck-sized horses. The hundred donks will defeat the one decent player time and again by sheer weight of numbers.

IntenseHeat said:

But remember you're not gambling. You're playing poker.

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This, I must say, is one of the most quotable poker quotes I've ever seen and should be written on the top of every online player's monitor.

This thread is so tilting.

The hundred donks will defeat the one decent player time and again by sheer weight of numbers.

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If you think you are in better shape against 100 good players than 100 donks you just don't understand how money in poker is made.

when u shove your AK you dont see too many calls with hand's less than AQ or pocket tens.

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Here's a secret: When you get deep in a tournament, the people who fold too much are the donks.

Here's another secret: When you shove your AK, you'd rather get called by 2 live cards than by TT+/AQ.

baudib1 said:

This thread is so tilting.



If you think you are in better shape against 100 good players than 100 donks you just don't understand how money in poker is made.


Here's a secret: When you get deep in a tournament, the people who fold too much are the donks.

Here's another secret: When you shove your AK, you'd rather get called by 2 live cards than by TT+/AQ.

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when im shoving with AK, its nice to see villain on AQ,AJ ,A10. if he hits he hits. but shoving with AK and getting called with 10-J off and losing to me is very aggrevating. I love donks in cash yes, but in tourneys,id like it if there were a bit less but hey, it is what it is.

It's so wrong. Why are you more annoyed when something that happens more often happens. Tougher field = less profitable. Not negotiable

duggs said:

It's so wrong. Why are you more annoyed when something that happens more often happens. Tougher field = less profitable. Not negotiable

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agreed.