Hi, I recently took about a month off poker after losing $30k in 2 days at 5/10. I took a month off and i became dissillusioned with poker and contemplated just taking the money I've won and living luxuriously (for a uni student) for a few years. However after 3 weeks or so I began to want to play poker again and over the last week I have just been studying - watching loads of CR videos and perusing this forums and poker tracker.
Over the past week, particularly after watching the CR 200th videos and reading Lukie's post regarding bld and his hyper-aggression, I started to think that maybe hyper-aggression is the way to go.
Most 5/10 players are pretty methodical, TAGG's playing SOLID poker - set mining, reraise JJ+/AK, etc etc, pretty standard stuff. Others, such as Gabe, play differently and I'm starting to see the merits of this. When playing against Gabe before I noticed that he would very rarely be in a pot without being the aggressor, this meant he was reraising all his small pairs almost all the time. At this time I used to think to myself that he was giving a lot of value up by doing this as set hunting - i.e. calling a raise with a small pp hoping to hit a set is so profitable, and it IS profitable even at higher stakes and if your playing as low as 13/7 you regularly get paid.
When I used to play against players like Gabe and stoplose who were hyper aggro I used to almost always just call with AQ+ any PP AA and KK included, and would CR AI if I had TPTK or better, as long as the TP was Q+.
After watching the CR 200th videos I noticed Green Plastic made a lot of money reraising a C-betting into players, Muddywater talked about set mining being unprofitable to reraises and after thinking about it I have to agree, and that EV wise it is best to dump the hand to a good LAG, as if their reraising range is light they are very often not going to have anough of a hand to stack off the 1 time in 8 you hit your set, a good player can lay down a hand, so for the sake of discussion lets say you get paid one in 3 times you hit your set - thats 1 stack for every 24 flops - Extremely -EV.
This in turn leads to the value of aggression, If you reraise with position, and get called, then you bet or raise the flop - what does the average opponant need to continue in the hand? I'd say at least TP/TK. As you have position on them they have to be worried that calling a flop bet or raise in a reraised pot may be commiting them to the hand, so there are going to be few times that you will be facing trouble when you reraise and C-bet, if you do face resistance then you are left with a decision, but if you are met with resistance this usually means as I said earlier at least TPTK for the standard players so this won't be often and you can just pitch it if you cant beat it.
Not to mention the times preflop that you'll take it down. Put yourself in your opponants shoes - say he has pocket 10's and raises, you reraise on the button - he knows your very lag, but he also knows your a good player. He can reraise his 10's - but that would essentially turn his hand into a bluff and does a standard players want to invest 30-40BB's with just 1010? probably not. So, he calls. If the flop brings all unders say 379, you take the lead, by either raising his bet or betting when he checks to you, now he is thinking "well, JJ-AA is beating me, as well as 99/77/33, If he called his stack is almost equal to the pot and in his mind he isnt beating much not a good situation. If the flop comes AJ7 - again, is he going to continue? probably not, either way +EV for you. Basically the only good flops for him are one with a ten on.
There is not much that can be done to combat this, apart from slowplaying AA/KK preflop then C/R flop (assuming 100BB stacks - but thats a different topic). Anyway sorry for such a long post, just random thoughts, any feedback would be greatly appreciated. In the end I suppose it boils down to, make sure you are the one raising, It just makes it a lot more difficult for your opponants, not to mention making you far more difficult to read.
Position+Aggression = money.
I'm also starting to question the value of set mining in general, above 5/10. I'm posting this in the higher stakes as I think it has the most relevence to the higher stakes games. Solid ABC poker works at the lower levels and against players who cant fold an unimproved AK or PP's this is definately not the best strategy, but against your standard 5/10 TAG it's a different story.
Also, just wondering how the U.S poker ban has affected the games, as I havent played much at all since the bill went through. Thanks.
