Beating Loose No Limit Hold Em Games
Adapt or die
One of the most important skills in poker is adaptability, a lot of people have trouble in this area, they form a set way, their way of playing, which can work well for them in their ‘normal’ game, but when they play in a game which differs significantly from their normal game they can come unstuck.
Not all loose games are created equally
Even when they make adjustments they may not make necessarily the right ones. Take the case where a ‘solid’ Hold Em player joins a loose game and our poker player recognises this and adjusts his play, however many time the player doesn’t make the correct adjustments, for one thing there is more than one type of loose game.
Take a flop more often when you have big implied odds in a loose passive game
There is a loose passive game where several players are limping and seeing the flop with all sorts of random hands. In these sort of games, small and medium pairs, Ax suited and suited connectors all increase in value a lot. You get to see the flop cheaply, and if you hit your hand given the loose passive nature of the game there’s a good chance you will get paid off handsomely making it very much EV+ to play these types of hands. That’s straightforward enough then and most ‘solid’ players should do well in this type of game.
Don’t lose the plot when you join a loose aggressive game
However there is another loose type of game, one populated not by loose passive players, but by loose aggressive ones, even maniacal ones, where the hand is routinely raised and re-raised preflop with a variety of holdings. Now your solid player needs to adjust quite differently in order to have a positive expectation in this game. Limping in with hands is now virtually out of the question as with the raising raging all around there is little chance of seeing the flop cheaply.
Tighten up when things get wild
However many solid players have difficulty making this adjustment, they rightly sense that there’s good value out there and are eager to see the flop, whereas they should retain their composure and bide their time. Patience is now the key, in fact the solid player should tighten up more so than even in his usual game and simply wait for a decent starting hand like JJ+, AQs, AK.
Put on the ‘broken wing’ act when heads up against maniac
Once you do see the flop, you need to make sure you don’t get rolled over by a maniac opponent. If you have a strong hand, slow-playing it is an option against a player who doesn’t know when to back off, and takes every check as a sign of weakness. In fact you can do this much lighter than you would do against a more regular opponent.
