Hero call with AK on Q-high board vs LP.

To be clear, I am not dissing Garick.

I just don't see why people are quoting his old words of wisdom (thoughts from 2014?) that are likely outdated for 2024 live NLHE games.

Part of the reason I posted this hand, um brags aside, was to subject the Loose-Passive description to critical scrutiny (technically a rhetorical exercise in this sense). The reality is that we need descriptive categories such as LP, TAG and OMG for communication purposes on this forum. I can't livestream the hand (and the previous 30 hands, nearly ALL of which villain played) to allow everyone else the opportunity to take their own particular notes on villain. Of all the categories available in the 2+2 LLSNL posters' toolbox, I still believe LP was the best fit for this villain. It seems that the question of whether a LP may become "aggro" for a small percentage of the time, typically on the turn and river, is still relevant. If the answer is "yes" a LP can temporarily become "aggro", then the question of how to exploit their provisional "aggro-ness" is definitely worth asking.

Working out how often a LP becomes aggro is obviously key. I haven't spent time counting combos etc., but if, for the sake of speculation, the LP starts betting their semi-bluffs more than 20%, shouldn't we be x-calling more turns and including more bluff-catchers in our b-x-x range? What concerns me is that some responses say I should have bet turn (I don't believe you necessarily said this). But villain was nearly always calling, which means we're are getting to the river with A high 90% of the time. Then we are either firing a third barrel or giving-up (and hope villain gives up, too, if we don't decide at the last-minute to bluff catch because of sizing/live tells).

I'm confident saying villain was both loose and passive. I think we have to accept that being loose and passive doesn't always preclude a villain from being aggro, albeit in specific spots. If I had seen previous hands where villain bluffed with air/busted draws, I would have included it within the OP, but I didn't. This thread would have been pretty mundane if we knew villain had bluffed previously --- I mean, I probably wouldn't have posted the hand at all.

I agree with this. Maybe I should have said "LP (version 5: low-freq aggro-stabs/turn-river)."

this ^^^

Blocklers blah, Line doesn't make sense blah, He doesn't rep anything blah, MDF blah, GTO blah blah blah.

It's a freeking loose passive at low stakes. He's led for over $100 on river. Fold. Sure he'll occasionally have a bluff but never at a frequency you can profitably pick them off.

I don't believe all on this thread believed me saying "I'm not going to pretend I'm some live-tell guru" meant the exact opposite. However, I understand that my rhetoric can result in others thinking I mean the opposite of what I say. As an aside, I do believe not enough weight is given to live-tells in these forums, but that is partly because it's harder to communicate how live-tells are interpreted; it's also because talking about action-frequencies and bet-sizings is easier, given they are quantifiable. Labelling information that is primarily qualitative as "magical" to me is just a convenient way of not giving it due weight. Anyway, fair to say I could have mentioned live reads in the OP.

My didactic tone was in response to your language (e.g. "unbelievably standard") and hyperbolic examples. The phrase "hero-call" exists for a reason --- as soon as I say "I hero-called" it's effectively become a "brag". We also know hero-calling, that is bluff-catching, is an effective strategy. I don't mind patting myself on the back for this hand, but, yes that could be a sign of delusion/vanity/cherry-picking results.

I appreciate the context and honesty (and understand this response was addressed to Smoola 1981, not me). I'd just add that not all good writing "is writing with confidence". Certainty of tone is definitely effective, but uncertainty, equivocation, even ambiguity, have their place too. Anyway, I'm able to distinguish tone from content and value your posts, even though I don't always agree with what you say.

"Loose and passive yet possibly aggro when checked to, or in specific spots that I haven't actually observed in the past hour playing with him" doesn't seem like a reliable enough read here.

An hour of observation may or may not be enough time to form a reliable read. If V really was playing 80% of hands, maybe we can say he's loose. But it may also be the case that he's been dealt a lot of good starting hands that just whiffed on the flop, which might also make him look passive, if he's just been checking when he's missed.

Without more showdowns, or at the very least more observations about his actions in previous hands (like, was he c-betting 100%, triple barreling, check-raising a ton, or just checking / check-calling everything?), it's hard to definitively say he's passive. And it would seem impossible to say whether or not he'd start a bluff when checked to on turn and barrel the river when checked to again. It would also seem impossible to say with confidence whether or not he'd bet middle pair on turn, or 2nd pair on river, if he was previously just stabbing at it.

If you spotted some tell, that's fine, but to reconcile what that tell apparently meant (he was bluffing) with our previous read would seem to require us to revise that read.

So, instead of simply labeling him loose-passive, maybe we just say we've seen him playing a ton of hands in the past hour, but so far we haven't seen him display much post-flop aggression when OOP (referring to the one other hand history you gave us), and we haven't seen enough to know what he does IP - with value or with draws/air - when an opponent with the betting lead checks to him.

If that's our read, then I think it's reasonable for people to say we should err on the side of caution and fold river, until we know he's capable of taking the betting lead and double barreling with air when action checks to him IP.

I think the thread would have been more interesting if we knew V was capable of starting a bluff when checked to. We could have looked at what value and what bluffs he has in his range, and if his sizing tells us anything. We could have considered any live tells you may have picked up.

You happened to spot a tell and caught him bluffing this time. But it's worth considering that without more time and observations, we won't be right often enough to make bluff catching him with AK profitable, and we should probably wait until we have a stronger bluff-catcher.

Two things here.

Loose passive is a description. If people are becoming more agressive, then use a different description!!!!

FWIW I've started playing low stakes again, after a COVID hiatus, and I really don't see a change in the typical mix of types at low stakes (at least in Vegas and the Bay Area) . Feels the same; the rules in Ed Miller's The Course still apply.

I believe a VPIP > 80% over an hour is sufficient to describe a player as loose. Btw this issue of a very sample size was analysed in depth in these threads:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/69/on...

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/174/p... (scroll to post #63)

Based on the Bayesian math, it was concluded that a player with a 11/11 VPIP over a small sample of 35 hands was most likely NOT a nit (e.g. a VPIP below 20). Rather, it was safer to conclude the player was a reg who had been dealt relatively poor starting hands over the 35 hand sample.

Given the player in this OP was playing over 80%, in conjunction with his demeanour, tendency to call flops and turns, I was confident he was not being dealt relatively good cards over a similar sample of around 35 hands: it seemed clear that he believed all cards were potentially good cards. But I acknowledge that my intuition could've been out of whack and the default math tells us to proceed cautiously in these circumstances.

If the figure were lower (say less than 50%) I'd be more than happy not to peg this player as a LP. But the reality is that in live poker those who play a ton of hands generally don't stay at the table long. FWIW I've been playing in the same room for the last fortnight and haven't seen this player again. In these circumstances I believe it's reasonable to maker broader assumptions (e.g. fewer showdowns to correlate reads) about a player type.

I agree with this description, but, in the end, it still sounds like a provisional LP.