Loose Play & Beanie Hats.

Yet, these seemingly loose players surprisingly can be and are often quite successful in the league games. It is extremely unlikely they are just constantly lucky players, luck will come into the equation of course, but there logically has to be some hard statistics that are tipping the balance towards this style of play, especially in our tight league games.

So I thought about this and, well, read on then you can shoot me down in flames after.

Generally tight strong players all play reactively almost all the time. This may even apply when you think you are the action player. The hardcore league members mostly are very tight, very exacting poker players. What I mean by exacting is; the pot odds, the number of outs, position, stack size etc. are all considered very carefully before any move is made.

Against other tight strong tactical players, your logical reasoning (if correctly reasoned) will win you the hand most times. Against those loose players you’ll also win most times in this situation, but no where near as often as against the tight player.

I would suspect that the majority of the tight league players are playing something like the top 20-25 hands only, this is out of a possible 169 pocket hands, and of those 20-25 top hand combinations, probably only acting aggressively with the top 40-50% (AA, KK, QQ, JJ, AKs, TT, AQs, AJs, KQs, AK, 99)

So as a tight player, 15 of 16 hands you will be playing reactively, that is when someone makes an action bet you will be folding any hand that is weaker than that 1 in 16. Because you are playing that logical reasoned, text book, tight game.

These ‘tight’ strong starting hand combinations account for only 7% of all hands dealt, so if we accept the majority of the league players are very tight, what is happening to the other 93% hands that are being dealt? Well obviously when a tight player is dealt one of the other 93% of possibilities that are available they are almost certainly folding them at some point.

Not so for the seemingly loose players, their window of opportunity is much wider, they may play anything up to the top 80 starting hands (almost 50% of the 169 possibilities). And unless your 7% hits on the flop there is every chance their 40-50% pocket hand has. When this happens the tight player can lose big, simply because they are playing text book odds and will feel their 7% strong pocket hand must be winning.

The seemingly loose player can usually afford to chase the hand more also, because they have been picking up smaller pots all along by betting action bets with weaker hands against the tight players. Basically aside from the obvious suck outs that happen when anyone loses to a real river chaser, we have no one to blame but ourselves. We play so tightly we allow the seemingly loose players to clean up all the hands that are not within our 7% window.

And when we do eventually hit one of our 7% hands the loose player may not be that concerned, because to them the situation is reversed. They know that only a small percentage of the time they are in the hand will they actually be a big underdog. For them the odds are, how many hands they can pick up by the tight players folding, against, how many times they get caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

Add to that equation, they know the tight players, so it is easier for them to recognise when to drop out of a hand, or the tight players will come against another tight player with a 7% hand and they will hurt one another big time. You don’t often see the seemingly loose player all-in against 2 or more all-in known tight players.

And often on a big table with many tight players acting aggressively pre flop, that weaker hand often proves a better bet than the obvious top starting 20 pocket hands, which those tighter players are probably sharing as they acting so aggressively!

Well that is what I have reasoned and I have only thought about my league when reasoning this conundrum. I am sure this ‘theory’ doesn’t apply to free rolls or larger tournaments swimming with freshly hatched fry.

I am not even sure I am even close to being correct about my league, yet, there has to be a hard cold logical reason why the seemingly loose players do so well. Until someone can come up with a better theory I reckon mine here holds some merit.

Ok so the weekend is here and a new month has started and so a new monthly championship has started at the league. Congrats to November winners! Lardog and Saturn.

Tonight I should be actually playing a game at last! Woot!

I am even ready for Lardog tonight! If you have read the blog regularly, you’ll know all about Lardog’s ability to whisper little nuggets of advice to me at the most inopportune moments, usually ending with me crashing out on the bubble or worse when heads up. And all about my ongoing inability to not listen to his nuggets of wisdom!

As Steph said in her comment on the last blog-post; “lol I’ve heard it before right out of Blags mouth, “that is the last time I listen to Lar”.. but no he went and did it again. when will you learn hun do the exact opposite of wha the says.”

Well I agree Steph, but as I said in the reply to your comment, I have come to the conclusion that Lardog is a Martian (only an alien could drink that much and still play poker) and he has a mind control ray!

So tonight I prepared for him! I have fashioned myself a tin foil beanie hat to reflect all his mind control rays! Do your worst Lardog (or is that Marsdog eh?… eh?) bring it on! I got you covered now, just watch me clean up in tonight’s game.

Hahaha free…free.. free thought…. at last.. *maniacal cackle* hahaha…

*wanders off to put the finishing touches to his new hat*

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