Poker Pays My Bills

Recently I found myself crossing the line between having a loose table image and being a loose donkey. It’s one of those subtle mutations of you poker game that ends up costing you half your bankroll before you realize what has changed about your game.

I’ve been playing $1/$2 full ring NL cash, where most of the players are much tighter than me preflop. This allows me to steal blinds frequently and profitably, which increases my Poker Tracker (PT) statistics for “Voluntarily Put $ in Pot” (VP) and “Preflop Raise” (PFR). Most of my table is sitting around folding and their statistics are near 15% VP and 10% PFR. My numbers are closer to 24/14. Some tables might have a player or two that look or play even looser than me, but for the most part my stats make me look pretty active. This makes it easier for me to get paid off when I gave a strong hand. Also, because my range is wider it is harder to put me on a hand.

A crucial element of this active table image is that I am not actually playing loose, I only appear to play loose because I play more hands. In a sense, I am making tiny mistakes for small bets preflop and perhaps on the flop, but when the big money goes in on later streets I tend to have the winning hand. When playing against a bunch of very tight players who are sometimes grinding out as many as 16 games at one time, my numbers make me look looser than I am.

So where did I go wrong recently? I overestimated the effect that my active table image has on my opponents. Bear with me as I explain this in confusing poker-thinking terms: I suddenly found myself calling large bets with marginal hands because I thought my opponents saw me as a donkey and therefore will bet marginal hands strongly against me. This incorrect belief caused me to become the donkey that I thought they thought I was when they didn’t really think that I was that donkey.

The reality is that while my opponents realize I am playing looser than them, they are not adapting to this by playing loose themselves. Instead, they might be more willing to call my bets and raises because they think I am bluffing. When my opponents start betting big themselves, I need to give them credit for the hands they are representing. It is less likely they would try to run big bluffs against the most active player at the table. I had forgotten a fundamental premise to creating a loose table image - play loose for small bets, but revert to a solid and tight game when the big money starts going into the pot.

Keep this principle in mind when you see other loose players on the tables. Are they splashing around for small money but showing down winner when they get all in? Or are they making huge terrible call for heaps of chips with marginal hands? How they play when the big money goes in reveals if they are truly loose and bad or a solid player trying to create a misleading table image.

November 10th, 2008 Magdalena posted in No-Limit Cash Game Strategy