Further to the seriousness of my poker playing attitude:

Recently I played at a $25NLHE cash table at an event we ran on PokerStars. The plan was to get some good players together, fill up one table with the agreement that everyone would send the hand histories to one player. He would merge these hand histories together and someone would do a video analysis of everyone’s play with everyone’s cards showing.

I think I’m the only one of these players who regularly plays at this level; the others are mulitablers at $50/$100 NLHE tables. I’ve played against most of them before in private tournaments so I know that they are good aggressive players, and at the beginning I made the mistake of playing as if I were playing a typical $25 table.

Two plays in particular that I question. One was a late position call of a raise with AJ, then folding to a 446 flop bet. I considered reraising but AJ seemed too weak, and folding seemed too weak, so I called preflop. On the flop I considered floating but didn’t know if I could bring myself to do it against a very strong player so I just folded.

The other was a limp UTG with 77, which got raised behind me and two other callers including myself. The flop came very low and I considered donking into the preflop raiser but didn’t. He made a strong bet at the multiway flop and we all folded.

In retrospect AJ is too weak to call an early PFR, especially with this level of competition and I should just fold. 77 I should raise PF from UTG, probably fold to a RR. As played, with 4 in, no point donking the flop.

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But those weren’t the interesting hands. I had an aggressive player to my right who raised liberally from late position. One time I had QJs in the SB, and reraised his raise. He 4-bet, and I folded.

Later he raised again from the button, I 3-bet my AK, the BB 4-bet. Button folded, I shoved, BB folded. A fine play on my part; AK has great preflop equity and you really want to be the last aggressor with it preflop.

(For anyone who knows the phrase “the fourth raise means Aces” it doesn’t apply in this circumstance. Like all aphorisms it’s mostly true but not always. Here the first raise is from the button, so he could be trying to steal with almost anything. My raise could mean a big hand but could also just be a test of his hand to see if he was stealing. The BB re-re-raise is probably at least a decent hand but he could be squeezing knowing that the button and I could be both trying to steal from each other.)

But it’s not to pat myself on the back that I mention these hands. It’s that I’m not capable of doing this with a wide range of cards when I think that it might 1) win right there, or 2) be good to add some shows of additional aggression to my play. Even if the cards don’t get shown down I think it has value to be able to 3-bet and 4-bet light when the situation might be good.

Overall I think I wasn’t too bad aggression-wise. The 3-bet/fold from the SB, the 3-bet/shove with the AK, and later a 3-bet/c-bet with QQ. Still, in this particular game against these players that are good and aggressive, making a few plays is necessary.

Later edit: It turns out the AJ hand the player was playing LAG raising/c-betting with T9 from early position. The 77 hand the raiser/c-bettor had AK and the other two callers had 44 and 33. The QJ hand the button had AA (good 3-bet for information/fold on my part) and the AK hand the button had 22 and the 3-betting BB had JJ.

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This is where I feel that I might be still too tight, taking the game or money too seriously.

I’ve documented fairly long windedly about my problems adding aggression to my game, around about this time last year. It started with trying to 3-bet JJ/QQ in $10NL. Then trying to open up my raising range more from late position as well as from the blinds. Then a very short attempt to learn to play LAG. All of this in a relatively short period of time, and then my game fell apart as I had unleashed a monster. This monster would not let me fold, was constantly seeing bets as challenges, as tests of my courage and conviction.

This colored my decision making, narrowing my perception of the range for my opponent’s hands down to draws, low pairs and pure bluffs. All of these happen of course, but I was far too often reading their hands as such. I still see these quite often at the low SnGs that I play where the stacks are short, time is short (because I’m playing turbos), and players can’t let go of what might have been a decent hand early on but is now probably behind and they desperation shove, or, they just can’t conceive of the possibility that you have top pair no kicker beaten. In these games I’m somewhat more inclined to call.

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You know, I don’t want to blow the cap on my aggression again. It was frustrating, somewhat expensive, and took a lot of time to try to get a handle on. Even when I thought I knew the source and the types of circumstances it seemed it was something that I have no life experience with so I had a hard time developing a mental muscle to use. I have a visual image of something like a glottal attack (similar to a cough).

Anger for me blows fast and hard, and then it’s gone. Aggression is similarly hard to maintain as I’m by nature a mellow, even apathetic personality type. Maintained, controlled, sustained aggression I’m only used to using when playing competitive sports of some type so the aggression is matched with some physical activity. If you run hard at a loose soccer ball, battle someone for it, then it pops out but obviously closer to your opponent, then you quickly shift to a defensive attitude and start calculating angles to cut him off from the goal and from likely passing lanes. The aggression, physical activity, competitiveness, strategies, all go hand in hand.

Trying to maintain and control aggression without the running/physical activity is just not something that I have any experience with. I’ve had to create or build a faucet myself by practice and exercise, just like developing an underutilized muscle.

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