The Return of Weak-Tight

[SoftcoreRevolt]

I apologize for bringing back the weak-tight buzzword, but the title "Some of you play too tightly, and some of you play too weak, and some of you only play weak post flop, while others play weakly preflop" was too long.

I had hoped this problem had been solved when last winter a great post was made entitled "YOU PEOPLE PLAY TOO TIGHT" or something of that nature. In it, posters were informed they should stop trying to find reasons to fold good hands, and especially good multi way hands.

People have been encourages to be more aggressive as well, and it seemed like the tendency to follow advice from HEPFAP in games it wasn't written for was fading away.

But this week has been very troubling. I keep running into threads where people are posting that the OP should fold hands like T9s and 98s in Early Position. Why? You are giving up a lot if you are folding hands like these because your position sucks. These are really great hands for the games people in this forum should be playing.

Yes, these hands can be difficult to play when you only spike a pair, but that doesn't mean they will be unprofitable. Yes, it isn't as easy to play T9s UTG as it is on the button, but a player with the weapons you have at your disposal should not be bothered by that too much. With the huge skill gap that exists between a good player on this forum, and a micro limit donkey, bad position doesn't leave you at a huge disadvantage. These hands should still show a profit from early position, just be sure to think through any bets and raises you may make here. You have the talent to do so.

Just as it is good advice to play 6 Max to improve your post flop play, you should be playing these sorts of hands, since you will be in these sorts of situations. (Although in the case of equity questions, the case is more difficulty than how marginally profitable a hand is.) You can never reach your full potential if you pass up on these sorts of hands in these sorts of games.

So I repeat the request that was made so long ago, look for reasons to play more hands. This doesn't mean playing 54s in EP, or 78o on the button. But, I would hope people posting here know what I mean.

The other reason I'm posting is to ask people to stop posting advice from HEPFAP in the microlimit forum that works for thinking games, but is just weak weak weak play in the micros. Limping AK is NOT a good idea here. You want to raise and build a pot, not protect your hand with an EP AK raise.

I'm still shocked I that I've seen posts like this. You are raising 90% of the time in the micros to take advantage of the strength of your cards, and the weakness of your opponents holdings. This is not HEPFAP where 3-4 limps in front of you means there's strong hands out there. 3-4 limps means the table is covered in poo, and by raising, you will get more money into the pot when you are going to win a much higher percentage of the time than your donkey friends will. Yes, this does mean you will win slightly fewer pots. But the amount of money you win TOTAL will be larger than if you won more smaller pots.

This carries onto post flop in some cases. Luckily, we are seeing fewer Monsters Under the Bed, and I mean that. Once again we see a lot of hands where people are waiting until the turn to raise, (or in rare cases seeing a slightly dangerous card and not even raising there) or worse the river.

Please don't. This isn't for value, and this isn't disguising anything. In the first case, most of the time when you pull off these turn raises, and ill timed check raises, you are getting 1 BB from villain, but blowing out the field. In others, you are missing chances to trap people on the flop for more bets when the tendency amoung fish is to see a turn with a very weak holding on blind faith it may improve. Furthermore, by getting them to call here you bloat the pot, and give them more reason to see a river when they are drawing nearly dead to your set, boat, quads, or whatever. And in the case of disguise, all raising the turn out of no where does is signal to everyone I HAVE A MONSTER FOLD OR DIE. Fast playing is the new slowplaying people. If you hit a set of 9s on a low flop bet it. No one will put you on that hand.

This ended up being very long and hitting on a few topics I didn't intend to write about at first, so I hope it makes sense. I'm not the best person here to write on most of this, and probably haven't provided the best evidence for some of what I've said. But, especially in the case of looser preflop play, I hope I've gotten my point across. Try to be closer to a 20 than a 15.