Q&A #84: Can A No-Limit Game Be Too Loose?
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This is the mother of all poker questions. I’ve probably seen a variant of this question asked almost a thousand times. Can a game be too good/loose/soft? Do you actually want some good players in your game? Can a bunch of schooling fish turn even the best player into a sucker? A couple of months back, I answered Are Some Poker Games Not Worth Playing Because There’s Too Much Luck?
Before I go any further, I want to give the short answer. No. Basically there’s no such thing as a game that’s too loose. I say basically, because one could construct a game with enormous antes and tiny stacks and high rakes where your only hope of winning is if your opponents play ridiculously tight. But in any normal, typical, actually-existing poker game, no, the game can’t be too loose.
Today’s variant of the question comes from John. I think it’s an interesting sub-variant of the question.
“Can a game be too loose?”
Here’s my question:
Game: 1-2 NL at local casino, table of 10
Me: Playing deep stack with 150BBThe players there are very loose and pretty terrible, and they call everything pre-flop.
For example, I’ll be under the gun with AK, raise to $20 (10BB) preflop and I’ll get like 4 callers, consistently!
That means the pot is already at like 50BB when the flop comes. And I have like 140BB left in my stack.
AK is a good hand, and is meant to flop top pair best kicker (1 out of 3), but as we all know, flopping one pair is only a “good” hand and not a “great” hand. So when I do flop top pair it puts me in a sticky situation. The pot is already TOO big! Too big for a “good” hand and not a “great” hand, and right off the bat I have commitment issues.
I have gotten to the point where I think I may do one of the following things:
#1 – Don’t play as deep, so when I do hit my flop I don’t have to worry about reverse implied odds. (loose play collusion is a killer there, people hitting 2 pair with junk, etc…)
OR
#2 – Simply limp in with hands like AK, KQ, AQ, etc… in an effort to keep the pot small if I do hit it!
The biggest money making hands at this casino is playing deep, and flopping your sets with pocket pair against clowns who play AK to the death. But since this event is so rare I am contemplating changing the way I play due to the above issue.
While you’ve identified an interesting issue, I think you’re overestimating the bad outcomes and underestimating the good ones.
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Tags: 1-2-no-limit, flopping-a-set, loose-games, no-limit-holdem, poker, reverse-implied-odds, semibluffing, top-pair
If that many people will call big bets with inferior hands, shouldn’t you be raising even more? Also, against bad players who won’t remember your play, or who you won’t be playing against for long, raising relatively more with your better hands than your weaker ones would seem to be +EV.
The math in 2+2 thread 6996709 seems to be a bit different from that above. I think it shows offsuit connectors as flopping a good made hand about 4.8% of the time. It’s an interesting thread about how often suited connectors and other drawing hands flop made/drawing hands, and how often you should call a raise preflop with them. It assmues NL, while the PokerStove link above assumes a limit game.