... You have the best of it.

For example, when you have top pair, top kicker, but someone else lands two pair or a set.

I find that it's hard for me to give up my hand, especially against a LAG player, because he'll ram and jam the pot with top pair, weak kicker all day long.

I guess my question is, what am I looking out for? How do I make sure he isn't just trying to bluff me out of a pot...

Thanks.

You can't know. What you can do is play the percentages. If your LAG bets with air much of the time, call him down when you have a showable hand. Raise him when you have a strong hand. You'll lose some pots, you'll win some pots, but you should come out ahead in the long run.

If the LAG is any good, he'll probably adjust his game and slow down when you are involved in a pot after getting burned a few times. Or not. There are some crazy maniacs out there who truly believe betting and raising on every street, regardless of cards or opposition, is the best way to play.

Try not to think you have the best of it when, from the betting, it's obvious you might not.



Don't bet into him. Check raise him. See how he reacts. If you have position, wait for the turn. It's more expensive... Tighten up a lot on your starting hands so you won't lose your shirt when he really finds a nice hand in the hole.

Making reads is all about making observations based on reason, logic, and mathematics.

The only way to get better at it is, when you're folding for hours on end, try to guess what your opponents have.

If he raises preflop, what range of hands does he raise with? Position, stack, his mood, etc... all of it's important.

If you knew nothing about poker but were somehow able to remember every detail of every hand played at your table, you'd be excellent at making reads. Betting patterns are very important.

What about an aggressive player that hasn't had to show down a hand yet? You can only guess that most of the time they are raising with junk, but you don't really know.

With no reads, the strength of your hand also dictates the way you should bet.

Sometimes you just have to pay for information, and sometimes you get huckled.

That's what makes poker so much fun!

i'm thinking this is NL.

So based on that, make sure absolutely sure.. you can lose your buy in.
If he's running over you and the others, not having to show anything, it may because no one feels like losing 50-$200; and they are afraid he'll make them play for their whole stack.

I say this from experience. Your mileage may vary.

look to play pockets pairs, suited connector, stuff that has lots of post-flop info ( that is, you know where you stand ) AJ offsuit is great but against a lag, are you going to call off a 2x pot raise with TPtK ... maybe with a good read... but I think these hands lose relative strength against lags. ( this may not be stated correctly, but I think the point I'm trying to make is valid )

Play within your bankroll, I repeat.

hope that helps... LAGs can be profitable but often get all the scared money before anyone wises up.

Yes, this is NL.

When I play my "A' game, I' m a loose aggressive player with tight fundamentals underlining my wild image. Most good loose aggressive players are not neccessarily ramming and jamming the pot with top pair weak kicker though. That's the type of hand we want to protect if we are ahead but not trap or play a big pot with. Basically against a looser player you need to follow Dan Harrington's code of trying to occasionally take the reigns of the hand pre flop with marginal hands. (In other words don't just call out of the blinds, hope to hit a great flop but then fold if you don't make top pair or better and he bets). The second thing you need to do a little more of is trapping with monster hands. If you flop a hand good enough to trap with try checking and calling (notice the difference between checking and raising where you take the play away from the aggressor)
Basically a good LAG player doesn't mind preflop calling stations and in fact welcomes them. You bet before the flop, get called by a blind. The blind checks, you bet he folds and you win a little more than if you just got the antes. Then once in a blue moon you get checkraised and have to give the hand away but also once in a blue moon you get checkraised when you have the nuts. Don't mistake a loose and aggressive player for bad player by just sitting there waiting for an opportunity to check and then say all in.

Personally, I think the biggest help is live experience. Online NL is fun... but in my humble opinion, limit online is much better than no limit, because reading people is much more critical. I can tell if someone's being a goofball a lot quicker live than I can online.

To play no limit live, you have to be almost hyperfocused in paying attention. I'm ADD like crazy, but I'm constantly reminding myself to look at other players, put them on ranges of hands, watch the way they bet, all that kind of stuff.

And never, EVER look at the flop first. Always look at your opponents while THEY look at the flop. The cards don't change, but their reactions will change, and you'd be very surprised how much of a monetary difference that makes.

When someone raises every single hand for a series of 10 hands, there are two possibilities

It's possible that, for those 10 hands in a row, he made big hands that warrant raises.
Or it's possible that his raising criteria is a lot lower than most.

You can't know for sure that it's the latter based on 10 hands, but it's highly probable.

Even if his raising range is wide, you still cant know for sure if this is one of the strong or one of the weak hands. You have to come up with a good estimate - which is a pretty fundamental skill of being good at poker.

TJ, I've always tried to look at other players as they looked at their cards and wait until the action is on me to look at mine, but then I realize that I'm providing a great opportunity for everyone to see my reaction. I haven't completely reconciled those concepts yet. Basically, I'm picking up their tells, but I've got a big flashing sign (waiting for action) that says "Look at my tells!"

It takes some getting used to. After three good live sessions of FORCING yourself to remember to look at someone when the flop comes out... it'll become an old habit with you. Like breathing.

The trick is knowing that your head can be facing one direction and your eyes can be faced somewhere else. I'm particularly good at that. I don't wear shades often when I play, but I guarantee you Chris Ferguson's eyes are darting around like a crackhead behind those oakleys.

Good responses guys.

Keep it up.

Also... Caro's Book of Tells is to live poker what Pokertracker is to online poker.

The sigh/look away and quietly bet is nearly 100% reliable (when way strong), and someone betting and staring you down is too (when way weak), in my experience.

You'll feel pretty bulletproof the first time you trust your reads correctly. With me, I laid down 99 on a K-9-2 RAINBOW flop and I was right because of that book.

Preflop, he looks at his hand... looks at his chips, looks at the tv. Raises 6x with 1 limper in front without announcing raise, just threw $18 out there.

Flop comes out... he sees it, and looks away. He VERY deliberately counts out $25, sighs, and says quietly "twenty-five," and gently places his bet on the felt.

Leans back and looks away. I could see the pulse in his neck.

I couldn't decide if it was AA or KK, but he ALWAYS overbets the flop with AA. I think forever and folded and showed the 9's... and he flipped out mad at me (I'd taken a nice pot off him earlier that night). After that, nobody at the table came close to messing with me. It was awesome.

TPMM

That sounds nice in hindsight, but it's a pretty brutal fold against any read short of quite literally reading his cards off a mirror conveniently placed behind him.

Aside from 4 or 5 pages I found the book to be virtually worthless. Definately not in the same league as PT.

[quote="Abbaddabba"]That sounds nice in hindsight, but it's a pretty brutal fold against any read short of quite literally reading his cards off a mirror conveniently placed behind him.

You feel good when you make a play like the one TJ made and you're actually right. Although I probably would have raised him about 30-35 more and then folded if he came over the top if I'd made that read. I would just have to be 99.9% sure I was beat and it would be worth the fifty five or sixty bucks to find out. But hey, once agian kudos to TJ. Great lay down.

I think that tells are either a big advantage or disadvantage of live play. (depending on how good each player is at reading tells and masking their own) Certainly analyzing physical tells adds another nuance to the game and in its purest albeit increasingly scarce form these are one of the staples of great poker. However in online NL, since the hands are coming in twice as fast you can compensate for the lack of physical information with a more precise hand catalog on each player. There's an old saying that if you can't spot the sucker in your first half hour at the table then you are the sucker. Well online it only takes fifteen minutes. Sometimes even less.

While you can't actually tell whose drunk, and who is shaking all over the place and who is just a little bit sloppy in general you can tell who is calling every raise and then superfast donkey check-raising all in every other hand. You get to see twice as much cheese in half the time! Secondly behind your own computer screen there is less of an embarrassment factor after making bad plays. At a live card table when someone is visibly steaming other players will go after them but it is more apparent and the tilting player has more time in between hands to cool off. Plus live believe or not, some people will actually sympathize with the hot headed guy. When you see somebody face to face you have to feel a smidgen bad about watching them completely implode. (Not bad enough to stop trying to win but maybe just bad enought that they feel empathy and calm themself down)

In online play once you start to steam it can be "good night nurse" rather quickly. Like Chris Moneymaker said "No one's there to laugh at you." I think tilt seems to be worse online than it is in live games. I'm interested to hear what TJ and the other bloggers think about my theory.

Top Pair Top Kicker, is never great, Its good, but not great so stop thinking you should invest a lot of money with it.

You should take down post with TPTK when you bet out, if you dont take the pot down, stop betting and analize the hand, see what they could have.

even donkeys hit good hands.

beware, lot of tells in Caro's books are well known and can easily be faked by a player with a functioning cerebellum.

I agree completely. It doesn't seem to be in vogue right now, but I try to check my hole cards immediately and fast, and then watch everyone else. Seems to me if you wait till the action is on you so you don't give anything way, then everyone is staring at you and you give everything away

Mark

I think it have many skill in NL poker.

????

good post

sigged