1. Introduction
This is an area of great interest to me. When I started playing poker I was very, very tight. TOO TIGHT. I am now a more aggressive player but two factors work against me: boredom and lack of play.
When I get to the table I am so focussed on this being my last cash game or tournament for a week or so, that I am anxiously awaiting my moment, and the thought of being ‘evicted’ from the tournament is too great to allow me to exercise my normal glamorous and flowing style of play.
I am writing this article for all of you tight players out there, nursing your pitiful piles of chips in the hope of doubling up.
2. The previous conundrum
If you remember, last time I set you a simple conundrum which serves as an introduction for this article. I asked you to imagine that you were a tight player, limping in under the gun in a pot limit hold’em game with a JT.
The flop comes down T62 rainbow after a pre-flop call by a ‘Mr. Vicious’. Who does the flop favour, YE or HE?
The answer is really quite simple. You (Mr. Tight) are not in a position to survive any attack from Mr V.
The only good turn card is a Jack Or Ten, since any under card completes a straight or pairs the board and an overcard is obviously dismal. Thus the chance of you getting a bad turn is (52-5-6)/(52-5) or 87.23%
You have to lead out on the flop.
As for Mr. V, an intelligent player (like me) will automatically move in at this point forcing you to fold. Mr. V knows you don’t have 2 pairs (T6, T2, 62 ?) and most tight players look for a check raise with a set, so ‘le voila’, Mr. T’s bet forces an attack that he must fold to. If Mr. T should check, Mr. V can safely check and await the probable scare card on the turn. If now Mr. T bets, he can wisely fold or else if Mr. T checks, he will attack and force old straight shooter to fold.
Now the meat:-
3. Why do tight players lose to aggressive players?
The above scenario, occurs commonly when a tight player in an aggressive Qiu Qiu Online game encounters the old enemy, BOREDOM.
Remember how last week we showed that in a pre-flop wild game, it is a mere 12.7:1 shot that a tightish player such as myself receives no start for a whole hour, let alone win a hand. In such a situation, boredom can make a JT under the gun look like three Aces.
Let’s look carefully at the JT as a starting hand.
Let’s count all the flops where we have ‘hit’ something:-
Now bearing in mind that the number of flops = 19,600 we have that
The probability of us hitting something is, 25.5714%.
Even worse, if we exclude the dubious, 4 straight and top pair (remember the past conundrum) we have
The probability of receiving a good flop is 10.2041%.
One more; Let’s exclude just the top pair. Allow that the 4 straight is an ok flop. Thus we have
The probability of receiving a reasonable flop is 12.3469%.
The fact is, whichever way we cut it, Mr. Tight and Bored gets into very deep water when his condition leads to such indiscretions.
Lets look at another typical ‘bored’ hand.
A5 (or any other baby card) suited!
I’ve often been guilty of playing this hand out of position. Let’s analyse it as before!
Remember, as this is potlimit and we are assuming the tight player is out of position, our real life example shows we shouldn’t even consider top pair as a hand.
This gives us:-
The probability of us hitting something is, 13.5714%
Another Loser!
Lets consider a KQ suited:-
Much, much better!
The probability of us hitting something is, 38.2296%
Nb. Please see the current conundrum for some expansion of this concept and a warm up for the follow-up article.
Remember:
Tightness leads to Boredom,
Boredom leads to frustration,
Frustration leads to loss
Loss leads to the Dark side of the felt
4. Conundrum
Given the last example, an early holding of a suited KQ, consider how you would analyse the merits of a raise versus a limp.
i.e. You hold a KQ under the gun in a pot limit hold’em game. Broadly speaking, call or raise? YES IT IS MATHS!
5. Notes Just to clarify the tables above,
5.1 Type
The type of hand we hit on the flop.
5.2 Include
A little detail concerning the specific hand we are hitting.
5.3 Exclude
Flops to exclude to avoid multiple counts of the same hand or to avoid special case bad flops.
5.4 Flops
How many flops meet the conditions.
5.5 P
The probability of hitting such a flop.
Thanks for your attention,
Paul Samuel
