VPIP and strategy, how to adjust for higher limits

[Dommer]

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When u say he needs to play more hands I think you should qualify this a little. I spent a long time trying to find out what hands it was I should be playing. It seemed that there were so few really playable hands to choose from, no one ever semed to post a hand that wasn't one of these and yet most claimed VPIP of around 20% in full ring and 30%+ in SH play.

It takes a mental shift to get from the idea of the two cards you are dealt being the 'Hand' (position not withstanding) to the more complete picture of the hand being your cards, your likely opponents in this hand, your position in the deal and in relation to your oponents, your opponents 'style' and weaknesses, the potential earn (implied dodds), your opponents likely cards, availability of reads etc. When you start 'thinking' about a hand this way many cards become playable that a 15/6 player is discarding and conversely, many hands he is playing will be folded.

edit: when i say 15/6 player I mean a 15/6 player who would quote his stats as an idicator of the hands he chooses to play preflop. e.g. I have 15%VPIP so I play AQo+, ATs+ ,TT-AA in EP, add in Axs in MP, add SCs and 2 broadway cards in late. Not I have 15%VP because I ony play hands aginst really bad players avoiding those who are only moderately bad etc.

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I'm hijacking this post from another thread because I thought it deserved more discussion in its own thread. Great post btw skuzzy. (Original thread link)
For those who didn't read the original skuzzy is commenting on the fact that I'm a 13/5.3-ish player at .5/1. I used to be like 13/4 though so I think I'm on the right track.

I think what you are talking about is one of the things I need to work on to move up to the 1/2 level. Even at .5/1, if the table is all tight-ish I basically break even or make a smaller profit than normal. This is what I believe happens at 1/2.

I think part of the reason I play the way I do is that I do this for a living, so I naturally search for the lowest variance play style, which isn't necessarily the most profitable. For me that means playing tightly and also only playing hard against players I deem will pay me off. So against a tighter player I am only raising to continuation bet the flop and end the hand there (unless I flop a monster of course). Sometimes I won't even bother calling to hit a set against a player because I know hes tight and I know he knows I'm tight. I will loosen my raising standard against a tight player sometimes since I know I'm likely going to take it on the flop. I'll also semi-bluff tight players nearly every time (loose players most of the time). But basically I am just very very cautious overall v a tight player, waiting for a really good hand and not bluffing them much.

Conversely v a looser player (one who I know will pay off with top pair, call with draws, or worse) I am calling with all pp's and AK, and sometimes a suited connector or suited aces if enough people are in the pot pre. If the guy is bad enough I will call with scs and maybe aq heads up. This strategy makes for about 4-7 ptbb which is not a bad living when you 8 table (my last 60k hands are like 4.5bb/100, the 100k before that was 7 for example). It's somewhat simplified of course because sometimes I will change what I do if I feel I have a good enough read, but that's the basic gameplan.

Only problem is, as you move up its less and less people that are going to just pay you off and more and more people playing tightly, and my strategy just does not make money against tight players. A lot of the time even the "looser" players are actually playing pretty tightly post flop (compared to .5/1), and are pretty decent about bluffing and that sort of thing. Meanwhile the tighter players are actually doing some pretty scary bluffs every once in a while taking advantage of my tightness (I caught one of the better players doing this luckily). Combine that with any other mistakes I make (and I do make them, I'd probably be slightly up at 1/2 if I didn't) and its hard to make any money. Sure I run into the occasional .5/1 style donk at 1/2, it's just more rare.

So.... the point of this post is I'm looking for tips on learning to take advantage of scenarios where I can loosen up my play profitably. I don't really see how I can post hand histories... unless I just decide to try playing loose for a day and post the more interesting hands. So many of the hands would go unnnoticed though. We'll see how that goes, in the meantime do any of you guys have some good tips or examples that could help me?

I've actually gotten into doing this recently (this is probably standard stuff for you guys but a little bit looser than normal for me). Before I wouldn't get involved with tight players at all like I said, this means playing qq/jj for sets, etc. But I've found that even tight players raising range in late position when its folded to them is pretty loose, so I've started reraising with 1010/JJ/QQ, AK, or maybe worse (KQ/AQ). This works quite well as they mostly fold the flop. But really I could be doing that play with 87s and it would play just the same, I just haven't had the balls to try it so far :P

Another thing I've been doing is limping more hands in late position, because I know I have a good chance to steal if its checked to me (I count betting with marginal hands like a flopped middle pair as stealing too). Sometimes if I think they are pretty tight I'll bet the first time it's checked to me, sometimes I'll wait till the turn (do this more when I flopped a little bit of something and want to make sure no one else did).

So basically to me it seems theres a lot of chances to exploit tighter players when they are making a position play (attacking your blind for example) or when you have position on them. That's just pre-flop though, I know there are some players so tight that they'd fold aces/kings to me if I put the pressure to them, haven't had the guts to try that yet though (I'd feel like an idiot if it didn't work.) And of course most tight players are going to fold to strength when a flush hits or when the board goes 1 to a straight, or when the Ace falls (which I of course haven't bothered exploiting yet as well), stuff like that.

Anyways, sorry about how long the post got, lets here your tips. I'll add more if I think of any too.