Re: Tight is right?
Hiya Grifter,
If you are good at reading players and their hands, if you are disciplined enough to get away from a hand that's only hit half-way, and if you pick your spots, you can certainly be successful playing a bit looser than is "correct." Some of the top pros -- Gus Hansen, Layne Flack, Phil Ivey, and Daniel Negraneu come to mind -- play very well this way.
Kurn's "fishy call" post was a good example, and I think you do need to make such calls occasionally, when the money is deep and you have the right situation. I also sometimes raise on "off" hands, as a blind steal but also for implied odds and later deception and intimidation if I hit the flop and end up shown down.
Why intimidation? Here's an example. In a $33 two-table SNG yesterday, it was folded to me in the CO with 22. This isn't usually a raising hand for me, but I decided to try a blind steal. The SB called, and the flop was 10-10-2. We ended up all-in, and my boat beat his set (he had T9s).
For the rest of that tourney, my reraises got a lot of respect, because people seemed to believe that no board was "safe" if I was in a pot. I was able to steal a few big pots with all-in reraises at the turn or river, on the image of that one full house. And as you say, I could tighten up, raise only on "real" hands, and get pre-flop action on them.
But all of those "ifs" in the first paragraph are important caveats, and I also have to rein myself in and realize that I'm not always going to make the right read, I'm not always going to pick the right spots, etc. In short, I'm not as skilled as a Gus Hansen, Layne Flack, Phil Ivey, or Daniel Negraneu, and I have to play within my limitations.
Right, William? [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]
Cris
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