Since nobody decided to jump into this one, I will take a stab. First off, I totally respect the play of the likes of
Lucko,
Matt Matros, and
Fuel, so I hope they do not take any of this wrong. But I was kind of offended by the
CC Weak-Tight article. I heard
lucko make this comment in Vegas (I think in
CCs presence), and it may have been the reason for the article. Calling someone weak at a poker table, or just calling someone a weak poker player is a pretty major insult IMO. I
immediately asked
lucko what he meant by "weak" and he said
something along the lines of they are easy to push off hands. My problem with the whole weak-tight accusation, is that it appears to lump a bunch of
bloggers who play with various styles into a single
category. Additionally, it uses the
derogatory term "weak", without doing a very good job of defining exactly what is meant by "weak".
Most people use the
PokerTracker methodology for
categorizing players. There is no "weak"
category in
PokerTracker. There is "tight" which is defined as
voluntarily seeing less then 20% of flops. There is also passive or
aggressive categories for
pre and post flop play. Aggressive
preflop is defined as raising more than 5% of your hands
preflop.
Aggressive post flop is having a post-flop "
aggression factor" higher than 2. Post flop aggression is defined as (Bet%+Raise%)/Call%. If you do not fall into the
aggressive category you are
considered passive. My play is classified as Tight-Aggressive-Aggressive. I really don't think they were calling me out as weak personally, but if someone thinks I am "weak" I would appreciate you going through my
PokerTracker statistics and pointing out where (just go back a couple of posts and take a look).
So my guess is they mean "Tight-Passive" (passive
postflop) when they say "Weak-Tight". If this is way wrong please correct me, but if that is what they mean why use a
derogatory term like "weak"? So lets
separate the two terms. Tight to me is right. Go to any poker site, and sort by % seeing the flop. Guess what? The tightest play is at the highest levels, the loosest is at the lowest. Assuming that the best players play the higher levels, then the best players are "tight". Tight is right, and it's a virtue. No one should be ashamed of playing tight.
So is "Tight-Passive" ever correct? It is pretty decent strategy at the lower limits, where ABC poker gets the money. If you are playing against a bunch of players who you can't push off of top/middle pair, or draws, your best bet is betting hard your good hands and folding the marginal ones, and calling with draws when you have the odds. Since these are the levels that a good portion of
bloggers play at, they are playing close to ideal strategy. I really do not see this leaving a ton of money on the table. In fact, my guess is if
lucko, Matt, and fuel were to take there standard hyper-
aggressive game to a .25/.50
NL cash game, they would probably not be able to beat it, without making huge adjustments towards ABC poker. At the lower levels you gain significant (enough) advantage by being a lot tighter than most of your opponents
preflop, and not getting too tricky postflop.
So what about the higher levels? The play tightens up significantly, so your
preflop tightness advantage is now gone. You have a mix of good players, and tight-passive type players who have recently moved up. This is where post flop play makes a huge difference, and the guys are
absolutely correct in saying they can eat-up the tight-passive players at these levels. ABC poker post flop is not good enough any more, and it's much more of a mental game where
deception is key. So I completely agree that the style of play they
recommend is correct as you move up to the mid to high stakes levels.
So far I have only talked about Cash Games. I don't think the analysis is very easy for
MTTs, where it's all about adjusting to
dynamic factors like stack sizes, blind levels, number of players at the table.... The good
MTT players tend to throw their typical styles out the window late in tourneys, and become a short stack maniac, a short handed expert, or whatever is required to keep chipping up, and not blinding out.
Lucko made the comment "part of why I have done so well in a lot of blogger tournaments are because players do play weak-tight". Dude, you do well in all tournaments. You run right over
bloggers,
donks,
noobs, pros, everyone. You are that good. Please don't single us
bloggers out specifically on this, it is
misleading.
Now a quote from Fuel55 "They last longer in tourneys than average
donks (compare the bust rate after 1 hour in a blogger tourney to a $20 tourney from the general population and you see the
bloggers are 25% bust vs. 50% in the norm) However this is more indicative of weak tight than smart play". I think I need to disagree with this. When the bust rate is 1/2 of what it would normally be, to me
that's a tough tournament. There just are not any easy chips to pick up. Who does not prefer tournaments with high bust rates, where chips are easy to accumulate? Just about everyone I have read
recommends ABC poker early in tournaments. There are a couple of reasons for this. The blinds are too small to fight over, and it crafts a tight passive image that you can exploit later when the blinds count for something. There is a small number of people who don't play this way, but it is a minority opinion. I can't really understand why it is
perceived as negative when
most bloggers play the correct early
MTT strategy.
Lastly, I would like to turn things back on the accusers. From Matt "There are gradations of weak/tight of course, but the main features are an unwillingness to call bets/raises without very big hands". So if you are unwilling to call bets/raises without very big hands you are "weak". Have you ever tried playing back at one of these hyper-aggressive type players. They are typically raising slim, and are relying on you to fold. When you pop them back, they typically fold their questionable hands. By there own definition this is "weak". So if you get a chance, put one of these guys to the test, and find out who the "weak" one is.
As I said in the beginning, I totally respect these guys play, and it is
extremely appropriate for the levels that they play at. Just be careful if you are a lower limit player. The types of adjustments they
recommend like dropping ABC poker, and raising slim more often, may be detrimental to your bankroll. If you want to take a shot at the higher limits, then listen to everything these guys have to say. You will be learning from the best. If not, then don't let someone bully you into changing your style by calling you out as "weak".
