[sherbert]

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Briefly, in NLHE a tight player can be ground up by loose good players simply because in that game, you just don't hit enough flops that hard, ergo tight players, especially weak ones, never really know where they are. And even tight aggressive ones may not get paid off enough.

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I think we have to be agreed on our terms here. Most of my experience is PL HE, but it's useful to compare one game with another. You are right that a tight player can be forced into a shell in a big bet HE game - although I know one or two very tight players - the less than 10 per cent you mention - who will come out guns blazing when they hit or when they have a big hand. In other words, by definition a good player will not be cowed in a loose agg. game. But it does mean that he will end up playing fewer hands and it is here where his variance, I believe, shoots up. The more loose agg the game, the more selective you need be with the hands you take to the flop (and beyond).

In limit HE Sklansky proposes that if it is six-ways PF and routinely being capped virtually the only hands you can play are AA-QQ and AKs/AQs. You will win but it will be incredibly boring. You will also find your hands being routinely cracked. So your ev may be good - on each hand - but variance will be enormous. The pots, when you win them will always be enormous, but there will be long dry spells when your hands, including sets etc, are busted.

I think, broadly that that model applies in PLO too.

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The reason why PLO better suits tight play, especially when the game as a whole is very loose, is that he can play a wider variety of high % hands than in NL, and is more likely to hit flops with them. Note we are not comparing apples to apples here. A tight NL guy is probably well below 20, if not 10% preflop. In PLO he's probably at 25%.

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I see what you mean, although if we are agreed on what makes a good player, then very few can play less than 10 per cent preflop in NL – surely by definition they would start to fall under the banner of bad player in that instance?

Also note I didn't say loose, but loose aggressive - this is a critical distinction. As a reductio ad absurdum analogy: imagine the perfect loose passive game. Here the TAG player is in paradise. On the button he can raise with abandon; everybody will call the raise but none reraises. On the flop it is simply a matter of playing to the nuts as all nine OPs are going to the showdown. When you have a hand, you bet, not to protect it but to get more money into the pot. None of the OPs ever bets, they just call bets.

Your win rate will be enormous and I should imagine your SD as low as it could possibly be.

Contrast that with the worst case scenario. You are a TAG player, who usually sees the flop with 25 per cent of his hands. But in this game, the UTG will always bring it in with a raise. UTG + 1 reraises and then one player will always go all in. You are on the button. What hands can you call with here? I'd say very few as the implied odds on many of your hands are shot to pieces. And when you do call or raise all-in with your aces, you are always a dog as over half the field has called the all-in reraise. So you are no longer playing the PLO tight player’s 25% ratio of hands preflop, but far less. And when you do enter the fray, your hands are far more likely to be cracked than in a loose passive game. The loose agg. players will constantly be putting you to the test on the flop as well. Bear in mind this scenario frequently plays out in the bigger online games. The tight player has raised PF; one caller. The caller leads out on the flop; you figure him for a draw and raise. He reraises all in. If you could see his cards and knew he was only on an eight outer OESD you would be a decent favourite here. But the fact of the matter is that this pushes up your SD as your whole stack is in play. This is a scenario that crops up time and time again online. Players feel compelled to get it all in on the flop. Your variance I would argue, must go up.

A tight agg. game would be the worst scenario possible but fortunately, they don’t occur that often in PLO.

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Or another way, a loose good player will often find himself in situations where he is a small favourite, but no more. These add to his winrate, but juice up his SD, as he will miss a lot of them too. A tight player simply will not be in those spots. He gets less variance, but pays for it with a reduced win rate, unless his game is very very loose.


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I guess the tight player in this case is playing a straightforward game to the nuts. Fine, but if he is in the LAG model I have concocted it will be a far bumpier ride.