newb99 said:
it seems to me that if you were to adopt these you'd become exactly the type of player it says to avoid becoming - predictable, "safe" and passive
(1) Predictable. Yes, you will be predictable. No, it won't matter if you're playing for small stakes. People are morons, and they won't notice. If you're playing for higher stakes (where players are good and will notice predictability), then go back to lower stakes until you can beat morons.
(2) Safe. You'll be playing tight in early position, but fairly loose in late position. I don't know exactly what you mean by "safe," but you can feel free to play speculative hands in late position, knowing it'll be cheap to get away from after the flop if you don't hit.
(3) Passive. You should never be passive, but note that passive has nothing to do with how many hands you play. There are two axes of play, loose-tight (how many hands you play), and passive-aggressive (how you play them). You want to press your advantage when you have it. Aggressive does not mean raising often for the hell of it - it means raising when you think you have the advantage. It does mean you'll be raising often, but not recklessly.
In the grid formed by those two axes, there are four types of players, from most common to least common:
- Loose-passives, they play a lot of hands and check/call whenever possible. You'll make most of your money from these people.
- Loose-aggressives, they play a lot of hands and raise whenever possible. You'll make money from these people, but you'll lose some big pots to them too.
- Tight-passives, they play only a few hands and fold over anything. You'll chip away at them by stealing their blinds.
- Tight-aggressives, the player you want to be. Just move to another table if there are too many of these at your table.
newb99 said:
Looking for suggestions for the usual early(3)-mid(3)-late(1+2+1) of a table of ten.
There's little point in memorizing a table. All the hands are on a continuum, with no real breakpoints, so classification is mostly arbitrary. Here are some types of hands and when to play them:
Pairs: The chances of improving a pair is much smaller than improving unpaired cards, so your main concern is how your pair is going to compare to other pairs on the flop. High pairs (pairs which will likely outrank the entire flop) are playable from any position, but low pairs (pairs which are almost certainly beaten by the flop) are basically speculative hands which should only be played from late positions and folded if you don't hit a set. Pairs improve as fewer people are at the table (which reduces the probability that someone has a pair - 22 heads-up is far more valuable than 22 at a 10-person table because it's unlikely 1 person paired on the flop by himself, but overwhelmingly likely 1 person paired on the flop with 10 people)
Suited: You're hoping to hit a flush with suited cards, so the main concern is getting paid off when that flush hits. Suited cards do better in multi-way pots than heads-up, and you want to act last (so you can dump your cards if you don't even have a flush draw).
Connected: You're hoping to hit a straight with connected cards, so again, the main concern is getting paid off when the straight hits. The closer the connection, the more valuable - T9 can make 5 different straights, T6 only 1.
High cards: This should be pretty obvious, but you want high cards. Your concern is a lot like the pairs - how your cards are going to look after the flop comes out. Although the chances of making a pair are the same with any two cards, it's very likely you'll have top pair if you have KQ, less likely that you'll have top pair if you have K3, and nearly impossible to have top pair with 73. Again, the fewer the people who are at the table, the more valuable high cards are.
Obviously, from these criteria, the best hands are things like AA, KK, QQ, AKs, AK, AQs, etc. And the worst hands are things like 72, 82, 73 (no high cards, no connections, no suited, no paired). Hopefully you don't need help with any of these.
In between all of the obvious cases, though, you'll have to use your judgment. 98s is a great hand to be playing from late position in an unraised pot with 9 players. But it's a pretty crappy hand to be playing from early position in a raised pot with 5 players. Should you fold, call, or re-raise from the small blind in a raised pot with 3 loose-passives and 1 loose-aggressive? There's no black-and-white decision - it's your assessment about how predictable these players are based on their past behavior and the size of the raise and your assessment of their assessment of you and other factors that can't be put into tables. None of those three options is worth excluding outright - if one of the loose-passives raised, they probably have a big hand and you should fold; if the big blind is predictable and the raise was UTG, you might consider calling since you're getting good odds; if it's the loose-aggressive who raised and he thinks you're a tight player, you can re-raise to scare him knowing the loose-passives will come along for the ride.
There are just too many variables to make a neat chart. Play enough to know how different hands win, and then base your decisions off of that.
