The Poker Circle of Profit
Online poker is crammed full of “good” games. A good game is understood to be loose, with lots of players staying and paying through the nose to see the flop. There is a lot of betting action in a “good” game, with many pots capped. But this type of game is only good for a very specific style of play, one that requires a level of discipline and patience that very few players, good, bad, or otherwise, genuinely possess. Besides that, the much-repeated theory that these games belong to the “rocks”, those bastions of strong-tight play, is questionable at best and quite possibly incorrect, at least not without significant modifications.
There is a circle of profit in poker that a lot of successful players are aware of, even if they cannot articulate it in as many words. Basically it goes like this: rocks will beat maniacs; maniacs will actually beat crafty players who mix it up a lot, and crafty players (let’s call them “foxes” in honor of the famous article on poker tournament strategy written by Chuck Thompson years ago) will beat rocks. Inside this circle, and well and truly surrounded by all three types of player, we find the passive-weak players, derisively referred to as “calling stations”. It is safe to say that this type of poker player is beaten more often and by more types than any other. There is a good deal of subjectivity when it comes to hold’em strategy and poker theory in general, but one issue is not a matter of opinion or interpretation: passive players who call repeatedly at any level will eventually lose all their chips
The beauty of poker is that each discrete game where you sit down will have its own character, and that character is also dynamic and fluid. It takes only one strong table personality to shift a game, making other players around him more or less aggressive. Because poker is ultimately a situational battle, there is no single overriding answer to the question of how to play the game well. One must, however, constantly adjust and vary one’s own game, reacting to the manner in which your opponents play while keeping your own style as enigmatic as possible.
If you play in an online limit game where there is a high pre-flop percentage, with five or more regularly staying to see the flop (in a full ten-handed game), you will need to adjust your game away from the standard strong-tight school of thought and become more of a fox. There are certain holdings that are cherished by strong-tight players, but which really struggle to hold up in these frenetic online games. AQ (unsuited), QQ, KQ (suited or unsuited), JJ, and AJ (unsuited) are all deceptively dazzling, and my contention is that in loose online limit games these hands all cost money in the long run.