Card Dead
Caution vs Aggression
I find myself playing more cautiously when I’m not getting cards. If I’m folding a lot, get a hand and play it normally everyone folds. So, I try to be creative (passive) and disguise the strength of my hand. It creates an atmosphere where I don’t feel like I’m playing strong poker.
So, I’m wondering if a better plan would be to keep firing raises & 3bets. Taking advantage of knowing they are likely to fold, by mixing in a number of bluffs as I go.
So, I have mostly kept myself out of trouble playing cautiously and still chip up most of the time, though never getting ahead by much. Should I stay on this path until the cards start coming my way?
How do you approach it?
I’m beginning to think I’m losing a lot of value by playing cautiously. Yet, I don’t want to turn having no cards into run bad. When the card dead makes my image tight, what should I do?
1 Reply
This is a game flow question, which is almost entirely outside of theory.
In theory, if 9 bots are adjusting their ranges on a statistical inference that you are slightly tighter from each position than you should be, they will defend slightly less and 3bet slightly less. This will allow you to overrealize your equity, making all your 0EV hands that otherwise mix raise actually +EV hands that pure raise for the time being.
If you look at any EP raising chart, you will see this describes a large swath of hands, so your RFI frequency might temporarily increase by as much as 50%, which would eventually bring your image back in line with equilibrium, making your play no longer divergent.
I don’t think this is a very practical answer though. That answer is highly dependent on the number of players at the table, live or online, tournament or cash, but in general I’d say you are the person who is most concerned with yourself.
