In the good old days, categorising players was quite easy. The dimensions of “tight or loose” and “passive or aggressive” gave us a two by two matrix with four rough categories of player (such as TAG, for tight and aggressive, or LAG for loose and aggressive). This provided a template for pigeonholing players. Granted, reality is never so easy, but for everyday grinding, this was a remarkably simple and useful approach.
Dear Dr Tom
I’ve recently moved from playing nine-handed NL to six-max cash games. I like them and I feel they suit my game, but the swings seem to be bigger. Any specific advice for this particular form of poker? I play anything up to 0.25//0.50.
Owen,
Kingston
“If you look at my boxing career based on the hands that were dealt to me, I think played them well. That’s why I was successful”
If you were to read an item of poker strategy before 2003, or even as little as four years ago, you would find a myriad of what can now only be described as "Hellmuth-esque" tactics for beating the game: play super-tight, value-bet well and time your (rare) bluffs wisely.
Have you ever asked a fellow player “Should I 3-Bet from the big blind with
A-Q when an opponent raises on the button?”
Is this a great question?
Nope.
Is this a terrible question?
Nope.
So what is it?
Well, in a word, incomplete.
At the WSOP you can really play some poker. Without the distractions of everyday life back home, for the last four days I’ve basically done nothing but wake up, shuffle around for a couple of hours, head to the Rio, play poker for 12 hours, come back to my hotel and fail to get to sleep because I’ve been playing too much poker.
“Everything that happened before 2003 in terms of bracelets should just be washed away. I think from 2003 or 2004 onwards, it’s a new generation of poker.”
Dear Tom,
In a cash game I will seldom throw away a pocket pair to a single raise because set-mining so often gets all the chips, but should I be paying more attention to implied odds? What are the conditions to make set-mining profitable and when is it unprofitable in the long run?
Leo, London
As I have said before, and no doubt will say again, it is an unfortunate trait of many card room supervisors that they seek to control players, often at the expense of fair and equitable decisions. Also, they will do everything humanly possible to absolve themselves of any blame or responsibility for any controversial occurrence during a tournament.