Help me give a name to this playing style

"Its like they "Think they are playing well, but are in fact only trying to play well."


the great thing about hold em is that trying to play well is simply not enough. not even close. if youre uneducated you will fail and that's the bottom line. it's not the sort of game you can just figure out and then get good at it and then make consistent money. i see so very many players in the commerce top section who try to play well, sometimes win, but definitely cant win much in the long term if at all. some of them make up for it with strong hand reading skills, having tilt mastered, and good game selection, but they still lack a strong theoretical and strategic understanding of the game. and they probably always will, god bless 'em.

first time i've seen the word 'Panties' on this site. i guess it had to happen sometime.

Baggins- pay attention- Babe's got lots of stuff you haven't seen on this site! Ha, LOL.

i try to pay attention. i also follow your posts a bit. i figure if you've got something to say about it, its a worthwhile thread. i do appreciate your insight into this game and the world surrounding it. just the word 'panties' jumped out at me as odd. keep posting babe, im keeping my eyes out.

If you guys want some insight into this player just ask me. It fits me to a tee.


To adequately describe me (or this type) you would need a third scale or dimension. Before posting in small stakes and getting corrected, I would look down at AJo in the SB and think "cool, so many options and it's so well disguised. I normally raise this in LP and have done well. I can call a raise because no one knows I have a strong starting hand and I have lots of options post-flop like check raising or betting out with a made hand."


I think adding a third scale to add to loose/tight, aggressive/weak works well to describe this type of play. I feel this gets into the psyche of players and it really makes any categorization of player do something a little differently than they normally would. I'm starting to call it the optimist/pessimist scale.


It clouds the thinking of a normally tight/aggressive player. And it will get him doing things that are incorrect. A tight/aggessive/optimist will play AJo in the BB when there's an EP or UTG raise. The same player after two bad losses on the river becomes a pessimist who is ripe for the plucking. He won't call a heads up river bet with Ace high in the right situation.


I think it affects all categories. Weak/Tight, or Weak/Loose will do things a little differently based on whether they are an optimist or pessimist. And what happens on the table really affects this scale. A loose/aggresive player taking down all the pots, will turn many players into optimists -- you start to get more early preflop calls with KJo and the likes.


On good days, I use this scale to defeat my opponents. On bad days and I'm not in the middle of this scale, I become the ATM. After all it's still "Magithighs the early days".

Dave (just visiting) in Hellville....Please come back to Vegas soon. We will make it "all better". Babe