What to do in very loose games?

4-8 Kill game, very loose and when i say loose, i mean loose.


For example. I am on the button in a kill pot and look down to see Kh,Kd. One player limps from early position(EP), everyone folds to me. Of course I raise. SB folds and the killer is in the BB. He is the loosest player in the game and will call practically every hand and if he has any part of the flop or the most gutshot of draws, he is in there. He calls the extra $8 and we see the flop 3 handed.


Flop comes As 5h Jh.

not great but not bad considering the EP didn't raise preflop. He will raise from any position with any ace, so I knew he didn't have top pair and for the loose BB, he could have anything.


Turn brings (As 5h Jh) 5d

Yikes! both of them had checked the flop to me and had called my $8 bet. either of them could have had a part of the flop or a flush draw. I figured one of them to have a 5. They both check to me and I check as well figuring I might get check-raised.


The 4c comes on the river and the final board is As 5h Jh 5d 4c


The BB comes out betting on the river so I knew he had to have a wheel. The EP calls,almost raising, but realized there was a straight out there. With both of them calling, I knew i was beaten so I mucked my cowboys and they both turned there hands up.


2c 3d for the BB and 8c 5c for the EP. I just sit back and laugh to myself and wonder how they can play such horrible hands from their respective positions.


Up to this point, my table image was pretty good but the players had a hard time laying down hands even when they knew they were beaten and preflop raises do not get the kind of respect they deserve at this table.


I had a small win, collecting 9bb in the 3 and 1/2 hours that i played, but it could have been a lot better if players had not drawn out on me with some pretty awful hold cards. But that is poker and you will always be up against the river rats that find that one card in the deck on the river that makes there hand.


My question is: In a very loose game like this, should i play as smart and tight as I normally do or loosen up and play some questionable hands like the rest of the table?

Well for starters I am surprised that the game is loose as you say when on 3 folks see a kill flop. Most of the loose games I play in will have 7 of 10 or more is a flop kill or not and raised or not. My doc calls is MSF syndrome (Must See Flop), this of course progresses to MST and full blown MSR /images/smile.gif

Anyway seriously the money you make in these games is from being a step or two up on others....your AQ vs. all the other Ax who didn't hit thier kickers. Also only playing nut and 2nd flushes against 94s and they are raising /images/smile.gif

The number of hands you can play is based on the number of players per flop and the raising conditions...lots of folks with no or little raises you can play more hands (no worse than 1 gap & not below 2nd flush with decent kicker, also offsuit still try to stay decent), however with few seeing flops or lots of raises keep your rockish game going.

Remember when there are maniacs in your game that just because you can outplay the nutcase doesn't mean you can outplay the others who think they can outplay the nutball.

Oh yeah most importantly don't ever ever ever get tired of people who play bad cards badly because as folks who have to play against good players only will tell you it may fell harder getting cracked by idiots but the money is easier to make.

Lance

This was a loose game and table. I should have mentioned that this was the fewest amount of players preflop in any of the hands that i played or saw all night, probably due to the fact that 2 of the players were taking a break in the bar or smoking a cigarette.


I guess I hate losing to 23o but in the long run I am going to make a killing. My game will have to stay the same and not sunk down to the level of the majority of the players at the table.

I generally have the best results in loose games. The more passive, the better. You do need to loosen up a bit, and play more hands, but not the "questionable hands" that others are playing. You need hands that play well multi-way. That means GOOD drawing hands. Don't play 23o or 85s. Do play suited connectors (I'll play T9s and up UTG, if the table is passive and I think I can get in for one SB), Axs early, Kxs mid-to-late, and even Qxs in late position. Small pocket pairs are good as well -- but if you don't flop a set, be ready to fold.


With so many people seeing the flop, you need to make bigger hands to beat all of them. Top pair with a good kicker often isn't enough. (You still need to pay attention to and get a read on your opponents, as some of them will be the types to call all the way with bottom pair.)


One of the keys to these games is getting the heck out if the flop misses you. With something like Kxs, you need a 4-flush or Kings-up to go beyond the flop. Don't bother if you flop just top pair with a weak kicker -- some twit will have just hit bottom two pair with a holding like 85o on a flop of K-8-5. If you're playing good suited connectors, you're looking to flop a four str8, ideally with some flush possibilities.


If the games are loose, you'll likely have enough players to give you the pot odds and implied odds to take these draws to the turn or river. Your variance may go up -- some days you'll keep getting the odds to go to the river but never seem to make your hand -- but so will your overall win rate.


The "Loose Games" section of HFAP:21st Century gives some great advice on this very topic.

Travis,


RK is right, Sklansky & Malmuths book gives you a great blueprint for the loose games, then when you move up, you have a tighter version to use. But in those really loose games, kill or not, you need to make complete hands, not all the time, but more often than not, thats the winner. Axs for the nut flush is the hand I see the most often winner, although connentors and one gappers make powerhouse straights too. Another thing that RK pointed ot that is really important is playing one of those hands like Kxs or Qxs and making top pair. If there is any credible action, you have to know when you are beat, if you chase in a 6-12 because you flop top pair, you are throwing off at least $18, maybe $30 if you show down. Not that you want that weak-tight image, but you try to figure what they might play, and how that plays against you(are you drawing dead) and play accordingly.

I have to agree with Lance here, I thought describing the game as loose, then telling the tale of a hand where only 3 saw the flop was a bit of a contradiction.


As for Lance's diagnoses of various diseases, he forgot a couple…


There's MSFNMW syndrome. That's must-see-flop-NO-MATTER-WHAT syndrome. Symptoms include calling four bets cold with 94o (seen it, got my aces cracked by it, loved it!). It's an insidious disease that can fester and progress into MSTNMW and MSRNMW, the secondary and tertiary forms of the illness. I once saw a player with MSRNMW disease. He was gravely ill, and desperately needed some cipro…. He caught his two pair on the river in a kill pot – dueces and threes. The flop was A K Q with two spades and a club. The turn was the 3s. He had 3h2d. What's even more stupendous is that he put up with a bit o' flak to get there, then, when the 2 hit on the river, he bet – and WON! Who KNOWS what the other guys had!


So just keep in mind, if you have MSRNMW syndrome, cipro is the "official" approved remedy by the FDA. It certainly couldn't possibly have anything to do with a scam by Bayer corporation!


Dave in Cali

Well Dave it just goes to show that with all the crap in the air in SoCal and the lack of quality socialistic health care you L.A. folks have to put up with the SICKEST BUNCH OF FOOLS ON THE PLANET /images/smile.gif May the money rain down on you forever my friend /images/smile.gif


What is funny is that when you call for a doc to help these miserable people, they then go through the classic stages of denial "that is a great lucky hand not crappola ", anger "well I can play NE2 if I want, this is a free country and I pay more in rake than you anyway bub", and all the other stages that hopefully for us never lead to any kind of recovery.....hey does that make us like docs who DON'T want the patients to get well? /images/smile.gif

Lance

"hey does that make us like docs who DON'T want the patients to get well? "


Pretty much. We recognize symptoms, and can even diagnose advanced diseases like MSRNMW syndrome. We even have the cure, readily available too, but we ain't selling it....


Dave in Cali

Remember the physician's oath: First do no harm. To your own bottom line, that is. /images/smile.gif