The truth about the limitations of LAG

[fimbulwinter]

very often I discuss my personal play styleas being that of a somewhat loose, aggressive player. I've often encouraged posters here to loosen up their games and play more agressively in situations I feel warrant it, especially given the rocky table image they often hold and the subsequent credit given to them because of it.

Lately, for whatever reason, there seems to be a lot of discussion about LAGy play and how it may be the best, most proftiable etc. I see a lot of bad information being thrown around, some of which may be misunderstandings of things i personally have said, so I'd like to clarify a few things about playing in an agressive manner.

1. true lags, those who are there just to gamble and get that rush, are the biggest losers in poker. more even than loose passives.

2. when I, or any other twopluser for that matter, say they play lag, it means they play relatively loose compared to the rest of the forum. honestly, many of your are incredibly tight, and while there's nothing wrong with that, I feel that you are not playing optimally for your given style of play. no winning player plays 80% of hands. I still play only monsters and the occasional raised suited connector UTG.

3. Playing LAG involves a different learning curve which is much harsher than playing with more orthodoxy. there's a great reason why the ABC poker plays are what they are: they win and they keep you out of trouble. if you want to try to win as a lag, get ready for much losing and breakeven poker as you learn to read hands and play properly. also get ready to experience lots of varaince and move up in games much more slowly than others who take a more conventional approach.

4. I personally feel that LAG, in most cases, is not optimal. I do feel that it is closer to optimal than weak/tight. The reason I play that way is because i feel it improves me as a player more quickly and because I enjoy it more. I like watching others play and learning from hands i'm not in, but i hate folding 8/10 hands.

5. If you want to play a little more loose and agressively, you need to play in a shorthanded game, at least initially. LAG is so much better when you're not getting run into the nuts all the time. Also, you need need need position. even more than a tight player does (which is a lot).

6. Don't try to play as a lag if it's not your style. he great thing about NL poker is that there is no ideal style like there is in limit. if you play rocky and steal you'll do just as good as the lag who gets his hands paid off.

7. the real crux of all this is that you need to have a cogent style. if you play like a rock, fine, but you'd better not let bluffing opportunities pass you by as your style gives you the best ones. Likewise, if you're playing fast, you'd better play your sets fast too as that's one of the biggest advantages to such a style.

8. a lag needs more than anyone to play well with respect to the blinds. many of the advantages of their betting and raising melt away quick when the money gets short so that people won't let go of hands. against short stacks in full ring cash games, lag is pretty far from optimal.



So to all those who still wanna give it a try, here's a suggestion: take it one seat at a time. say this to yourself:
"I'm going to play solid until the button, then maybe i'll play that 46o and might raise a suited ace if it's limped to me"

Just adding that little bit of unpredictability adds volumes to your game as your bets are so likely to get respect.

Don't get out of control with it and don't force it if you don't want to, but give it a whirl, especially you guys who play like 15% of hands. you'll be surprised how fun it is to put on the monkey helmet one hand an orbit.

fim

ps- one other thing:

a lot of you guys are saying that LAG is optimal because you have laggy players winning big in PT. unless you have like 10K hands of these players', then you're just seeing them on a rush. someone can hanve playable hands for 60% of the time over like a 400 hand sample and get lucky a bunch of times; that doesnt mean he's a lag, just that the deck's hitting him in the face. the cold hard truth is that LAGs are even worse than the general poker population in terms of how many win. it's maybe .001% who are truly gifted who kill the game, the other 2-3% of lags who truly win don't win as huge and work hard and smart doing so.

[swolfe]

great post. with the blind changes on party i've moved up and found that i'm not getting paid off as well on big hands because people are actually NOTICING that i'm tight. lately i've been attempting to mix it up a bit more (with position), making raises pre-flop and more flop bets than i would have with the 50BB stacks at the $25 tables. results have been good so far.

[DoomSlice]

I don't even think it's a problem that people are playing too tight... I think the problem is that people are playing too weak. I see posts here that advocate folds that I would never imagine making in a million years. Everyone seems to be afraid of the nuts.

My 2 cents.

[mztaim]

I am running into the same problem since I moved up. I hate to admit how much anxiety it caused me to raise that 68 offsuit the first time.
Then they all folded. Yeooooos.

[daveymck]

There was a limit post by Nate that was advocating a similar thing, saying that a lot of us guys (people like me vpip 15% at limit) were playing far too tight particularty from the late positions and that to evolve into a better player to be able to beat higher games lossening up and in essence improving post flop play was the way to improve your game.

There are echos of that in this post, probably cos of the multitabing element playing tight when on 4 tables is probably going to get you being a winning player, playing tight is somthing drummed into us form joining the forums as 30-40%vpip ers and so is the first stage of improving, the problem then is that a lot of us get our pre flop figures down are winning and so never really look to improve the key element of the game ie post flop, most of us focus on our pre flop play forever, even in the hand reviews here and in SSLHE a hand is put up and many people say fold pre flop rather than looking how to play the rest of the hand (I am guilty of that as well).

For a limit player converting to NL I am bringing a lot of that with me (my vpip is 15% at NL) I look to preflop standards (and am a bit lost without a starting table as a basis to learn) then try and play abc poker to make money (ok at the moment I am overvaluing tptk and overpairs but its the learning curve) but am I improving my post flop play probably not, but my aim is not just to make money its to improve and round myself as a player. Learning good post flop play is the key to it, and I guess loosening up in LP and on the button is probably the first step to it, but for me its not natural is against all my instincts and so the curve is going to be steep.

There is an essay by Ray Zee I think about the stages of a poker players evolution where one of the later stages is becoming a lag, to evolve and improve at some point us tag multitablers (at limit and NL) are going to have to branch out and learn to play more and play well post flop espicially if your aim is to improve and get and win in the bigger games, if you are happy 8 tabling $25 or 3/6 then fine but as the games change or dry up in the future you may regret it and wished you had moved from abc to xyz.

[vanHelsing]

[ QUOTE ]
if you are happy 8 tabling $25 or 3/6 then fine but as the games change or dry up in the future you may regret it and wished you had moved from abc to xyz.


[/ QUOTE ]

well said.

[Sam T.]

Great post, fimbul (can I call you fimbul? or do you prefer fim?)

There are two important I'd like to emphasize here.

First is what he says about position. Playing like a LAG from UTG is far different than playing LAG from the button. Up front, I'll muck hands like AJo without a second thought, but once I get to the CO or button, just about any two will do the job, especially if I've got a couple of limpers.

Second is that you have to be comfortable with post-flop play. Raising with marginal holdings will inevitably get you into delicate situations. (Consider, for example raising with KTs, and flopping a King-high board. Action is to you, big guy.) The only way to get comfortable in this situation is to be in this situation.

I think the suggestion to experiment with Laggy play once per orbit is great. Raise pre-flop, bet the flop, and watch the loose callers fold. It's as if they can't see your cards. And remember, if someone else shows strength, and you've got a hand full of air, it's okay to fold. Few players will catch on to what you are doing.

My two cents,

Sam

[Centrist]

[ QUOTE ]
I think the suggestion to experiment with Laggy play once per orbit is great. Raise pre-flop, bet the flop, and watch the loose callers fold. It's as if they can't see your cards. And remember, if someone else shows strength, and you've got a hand full of air, it's okay to fold. Few players will catch on to what you are doing.

[/ QUOTE ]
I wonder if the thing to do is to work this in when your table image is especially tight. I know even a tight-wad like me sometimes gets a rush of cards early in a session, and, at the opposite end of the spectrum, there are times when I seem extra-super tight.

I once sat down at a $100 table and got dealt AA first hand. I thought "these people don't know me", and this is the situation where the super pre-flop raise might work. I made it $20, but only won the limpers and blinds.

Then comes hand #2, KK. Wow. So what to do now? That same $20 bet. I get 2 callers, and start to see some chatter on the table. I end up doubling up, because they just couldn't *quite* believe I had it.

[AncientPC]

RayZee article:
http://www.twoplustwo.com/zee2.html

Good post as always fim.