Important realization

[Nate tha' Great]

Scare cards scare your opponents too.

I think I've been missing a *lot* of opportunities to pick up pots in situations where I've taken the lead in betting the hand the whole way, and a scare card comes on the turn or river that doesn't help my hand. This falls under the broader heading of not giving your opponents too much credit for their calls; over the past six weeks or so, I had drifted from betting too frequently when checked to into betting too little.

This is necessarily accompanied by a bit of a long overdue preflop tightening ... I'm working on cutting my flops seen percentage by 3-5% ... with a tightish table image, scare cards can be extremely helpful ... with a looseish one, opponents are going to take all kinds of shots at you.

That's it.

[gonores]

Does this mean your style isn't going to promote good, LAGgy games any more? You sound like Phil Mickleson here...approach the game with a little more caution, and the opportunities will come to you instead of you having to force things.

I do this a lot with free plays from the blinds, where I stab at the flop, and bet a scary turn. The play comes highly recommended.

[Nate tha' Great]

[ QUOTE ]
Does this mean your style isn't going to promote good, LAGgy games any more? You sound like Phil Mickleson here...approach the game with a little more caution, and the opportunities will come to you instead of you having to force things.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, I still plan on playing the hands that I'm involved in very aggressively; if anything tightening up a bit preflop might allow me to play the postflop *more* aggressively, since my bluffs and semibluffs should work more frequently. akshawnd generates pretty good action at his tables because of the way that he plays postflop, even though his preflop game is actually very tight.

To put it differently, there's a lot of wiggle room between Phil Mickleson and John Daly.