By
CrabClaws
Hello Pocketfivers! My name is Brandon, AKA CrabClaws, and I would like to fill a niche that hasn't been heavily covered in articles here: shorthanded cash games. While the beginning of my poker career was spent primarily playing MTT’s and SNG’s, I eventually made the transition to cash games, which I know is the case with many of today’s online poker players. While I’d love to further divulge the ups and downs of my climb in the poker food chain, there are already enough poker blogs out there. For my first articles, I will focus on poker theory and practice as it relates to today’s increasingly tough low-mid stakes cash games:
I would like to share my thoughts on a great way to add to your bottom line win-rate, with the secondary benefit of decreasing variance a bit. The simple fact of today’s game play is that formerly cutting edge strategies are becoming ubiquitous. In this instance, I’m referring to the LAG (Loose-Aggressive) strategy. While only a few years (if not months) ago, the ABC or ‘standard’ variant of this strategy was a huge money maker. It was by far the most profitable form of play for players that could negotiate post-flop boards with any degree of competence. As many of you have probably noticed, however, this strategy is now practiced by a large portion of the 6-max ring game population, negating much of the value of the ABC LAG form.
I believe that one of the most fundamental truths of poker is that to be successful, one must be ahead of the pack, even if only by a little. While this sounds intuitive, I believe that many players do not correctly internalize its meaning. While many take this to mean, "if everyone is playing LAG, then I should be playing LAG[complex]," meaning that they are simply trying to out-LAG the less sophisticated type of LAG player, I do not believe this is generally the case. While this is certainly viable to some degree, I think it is more helpful to think about what other strategies might be employed against our standard LAG.
Now that the theory has been laid down a bit, let’s consider a possible application. Conventional LAG strategy would hold that 3-betting in and out of position is preferable to smooth calling with a large range of hands. While this certainly has its benefits and should be a part of the toolbox of any cash player, I am going to suggest smooth calling on the button and cutoff with hands that you otherwise would have played differently, particularly against players that you have identified as standard LAGs using pokertracker or careful observation. I think you can flat call raises with two kinds of hands: ones that you would have re-raised preflop and one’s that you would have folded. Now comes the key to picking up your BB’s.
The average ABC lag is going to continuation bet anywhere from 60 to 80% of flops, and my favorite player, the “lagtard” (excuse the crude parlance), will pot bet nearly every time. Given that this player is playing with very marginal hands and is only making a pair one in three times (of which he only has top pair a fraction of that 33%) AND he is out of position, its time to RAISE. How much? Let’s look at the pot so far; our villain generally puts in a 3.5 BB raise preflop on average, which we call. Assuming the blinds fold, we now have around 8 BB’s in the pot, and when our villain c-bets, this brings that count up to about 14 BB’s. I think a very effective raise is about 1.5x the villain’s c bet or about 15 BB’s, near the size of the pot. The idea here is that, most of the time, had we reraised preflop with a hand like AT, we either would have won and missed out on scooping the villain’s inevitable c-bet or been called and created a large pot with a very marginal hand. Had we folded a hand like 78os like normal, we would have missed out on the action altogether.
I find that this play will take down a nice moderate pot a good percentage of the time, creating a profitable long run situation. Of course, if your flop reraise gets called, you can shut down, and if you are counter raised, you can easily fold. This situation is one that is easy to negotiate and will rarely lead to difficult decisions, given that you don’t actually need to improve your hand to execute this play. The pressure is put on the villain, who is playing out of position and is often playing a naked hand. Also, this doesn’t even address when your 78os hits a 569 rainbow board...
So let’s review: We realize that the LAG strategy has been adopted by the masses, and we rethink our own LAG (or other) tendencies in order to make the most out of predictable behavior. I hope that you are able to use this specific play to add to your hourly win-rate, and moreover that are able to generalize this concept in order to hone other areas of your game to the tendencies of today’s online poker population.
Good luck,
CrabClaws
PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $4 BB (5 handed)
SB - ($337.50)
BB - ($422.50)
UTG (Villain ) - ($597.30)
MP - ($394)
Hero - ($921)
Preflop: Hero is Button with Ts,9h.
UTG (Villain ) raises to $16, Hero calls $16, others fold.
Flop: ($38 in pot) 3s 2h 7h
Villain bets $20, Hero raises to $58, Villain folds.
Final Pot: $116