What's the best (cheapest) way to incorporate "trickiness?"

[Triumph36]

I play in an odd home game, NL $10, with .25/.50 blinds (it makes me cringe too, but that's the only way college students will play) so this advice may not help, but I've found just a lot of position raising will help. Raise some trash if it's folded around to you, don't necessarily play it like AA, but the key is, make the other players play more ABC against you. When you act aggressively, it forces other players to react, and weaker players will react in very predictable ways.

I'm not even speaking of advertisment, though as many posts in this thread indicate, it can pay off, but more generally, raise a lot of hands, even trap hands, pre-flop in good position (or even in bad position), and get trickier with them post-flop, overbetting, underbetting, etc. I've found at this point that no one at my home game has any kind of read on me at all, so now I can go back to playing ABC most of the time and get paid off because I have developed this reputation for playing unpredictably.

[RYL]

I love 2+2!!!

[Piz0wn0reD!!!!!!]

[ QUOTE ]
Yeah you can raise the connectors with a pot builder raise but (I know you know this) make sure you are IN position.

Gregg

[/ QUOTE ]

Position is very important. Another "trick", which has high varience unfortunatley(sp?), is to make a small raise after some limpers w/ a low-mid pocket pair in LP.

[Piz0wn0reD!!!!!!]

[ QUOTE ]
I play in an odd home game, NL $10, with .25/.50 blinds (it makes me cringe too, but that's the only way college students will play) so this advice may not help, but I've found just a lot of position raising will help. Raise some trash if it's folded around to you, don't necessarily play it like AA, but the key is, make the other players play more ABC against you. When you act aggressively, it forces other players to react, and weaker players will react in very predictable ways.

I'm not even speaking of advertisment, though as many posts in this thread indicate, it can pay off, but more generally, raise a lot of hands, even trap hands, pre-flop in good position (or even in bad position), and get trickier with them post-flop, overbetting, underbetting, etc. I've found at this point that no one at my home game has any kind of read on me at all, so now I can go back to playing ABC most of the time and get paid off because I have developed this reputation for playing unpredictably.

[/ QUOTE ]

My home game is usually about 4-6 players. Two of us are full time pros, the others are very good (some are on the road to pro). Because most of them are limit players, i can really outplay them. I play basiacaly as a HUGE LAG. I almost never limp, and i prolly play 50-80 VPIP (i change gears a LOT). None of these players (good players as well as good friends of mine who know how i play for real) cannot read me. I give a lot of loose fishy action, but i get a LOT of action from them. I dont recomend doing anything like this unless it is short handed, and you can clearly outplay the otherwise good players.

[NaobisDad]

I think in this case letting the occassional trickiness depend on the cards you get (suited connectors for example) is looking at it the wrong way around.
You first pick your spot for making a deceptive play, based on what you think the other has. It could be a weak preflop raise that tips you off or whatever. You then look at your hand, if you look at it at all. And if you find a hand like small suited cards or whatever, at least cards that could turn into a big hand (I find that playing cards that could hit low card flops work really well) you make your play. The trick of course being that you know what your opponent is holding, and them not knowing what you hold, or at least having a wrong idea of what you're holding.

The best bluffs of course happen when you represent exactly those cards that your opponent doesn't want to see, and you'll have to figure out what that is for each opponent. (I hate it when a draw card hits on the turn or river and opponents bet into me big).

Outplaying your opponents postflop I find the hardest about all of this. Considering you are a online winner, you should be able to do this, with the required balls to back up your reads.

Some other thing i've learned here is the reversed bluff. Betting your monster ridiculously hard. You wouldn't believe how well this's worked for me.

I also pay attention to the hands I play against really bad opponents, where I thought: "What the hell was that supposed to be?!?!". I memorize it, and do it.

Wow, this all of a suddens seems like a post full of obvious information. So if I repeadetly kicked in open doors on this, please ignore everything I've said.

[Jon Matthews]

[ QUOTE ]
I.E. the other night there was a Weak tight player who never varies his game with a nice size stack. He always either comes in for a raise UTG or folds, unless he’s got AA, KK, QQ then he smooth calls. UTG he calls everyone folds to me 1 off the button, I have 78. I raise to $10, to misrepresent my hand, he calls {Now I know its Aces or Kings, queens he would have reraised}. Flop 659, he checks I raise $25, he comes over the top for $100, I reraise $300, he goes all in, I call, he flips over AA. When I show him my hand he goes ballistic, and starts complaining about how I could play that hand with a raise.

[/ QUOTE ]


In fairness he should have read you for 99 (perfectly plausible CO raise) when you went all in and not got married to his aces, lol.


Jon

[GimmeDaWatch]

Hey. I too have always been a tighty McWhitey in the games I played in, but am starting to bluff and semi-bluff more against the players I think will let me get away with it. The simple cliched answer, of course, is that "you've got to give action to get action" against any even mildly observant players. The most obvious way to do this if you're viewed as a rock is to semi-bluff raise on the flop (and sometimes turn if you think he's weak and dont fear a re-raise) and to start buying alot more pots when its checked to you in LP. If you're usually taking down the pots on the flop w/your big pairs, maybe start raising with your small pairs as well. The key I think is that you're not always exclusively raising with big made hands that someone can safely fold their top pair to.

[amoeba]

aside from what everyone said about preflop, playing drawing hands like big hands, etc....


you should also vary how you play your monster made hands. Say, flopped set on non coordinated board, nut flush, etc...

vary between slowplaying and pushing or betting pot.

[fsuplayer]

Wayfare: I still dont know how to post a link to a thread, but if you look in my past posts, under mid-high NL. The date of the post is 4/29/2004 and its titles something like "best profiting from your table image".

in summary it you need to start raising some different hands, betting/raising big w draws and made hands alike.
there is some good advice from el diablo too.

I played like a maniac for a couple of nights, caught some hands have been raking it in since. people cant put you on hands and they dont have any clue how to play, so they call you down more, which can be great.

mix it up, hell play a couple of hands blind without them seeing, when you win the pot rub it in some and joke with them...you'll get action soon enough.

good luck

fsuplayer

[Wayfare]

Thanks to all responders so far.

FSU: I read the previous post and agree generally with what was said there. I guess simply having a lot of money behind and position is enough to make almost all hands fold against you given the table image. I'm happy to increase my raising standards preflop, I think the pocket pairs are an ideal place to do this because of their huge value when you hit a set. Generally I play relatively well postflop but I am definately weak postflop for that game. People like putting moves on me because they know I think a lot of about the depth of money (usually people are $100+ in .25/.5 game) and have a limited set of hands that I will go to the river with.

I think reraising with position may be profitable just for table image reasons. Especially on the flop with a strong hand, where people most like to raise just to pick up the pot. If you repop someone once in a while (say with a set) just because they popped you they will certainly be less likely to do it in the future. Next time you can expand the Shania of repopping (pun intended) to include strong draws etc.