About a month ago I was playing some 2/5NL at the Borgatta in Atlantic City and talking to the two poker pros who happened to be sitting immediately to my right. Both of them, like myself, are members of the wonderful twoplustwo.com poker community, and having something in common, we began to discuss poker strategy. While I ended up down a full buy in ($500), this may have been the single most valuable poker session of my career due to the information I garnered and new perspective on poker I eventually gained from our discussion.
One of them, who claimed that he rocked the $5/10 and $10/20 tables on both Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker and was just winding down a 36 hour session by donking it up at $2/5 live (some other online pros I talk to know him and verified that this claim is true), argued that the poker training sites, such as deucescrackes or cardrunners, are actually making poker more profitable for him. This goes against all conventional wisdom, as most pros can be heard complaining about how poker is "drying up" and the edges are becoming much smaller due to the hyper aggression taught by such training sites. The more people who sign up for and learn from these sites, the fewer there are in the ocean and the more sharks there are fighting to feed off of them.
According to this poker pro, he was able to play a 24/14 preflop style profitably. A 24/14 style is generally considered to be stationy, leeky, and played only by losing players. For those who don't use HUD displays when playing online poker, the first number refers to VPIP, or the % of time you voluntarily put money into the pot (thus limping or calling increases your VPIP, posting a blind does not as you are forced to put money in then). The second number refers to Preflop Agression (PF) or the % of time you raise it up preflop. Note that you can never have a great PF than VPIP.
I was initially very skeptical of these claims as this kind of style goes against all conventional wisdom. However, the pro argued that given his superior postflop abilities, playing many of pots vs. other players worked greatly to his advantage. These other players are raising and 3-betting (reraising) constantly preflop and with a fairly wide range of hands, but often get into awkward and somewhat bloated pots postflop with less than premium holdings. The pro was able to utilize this uneasiness for postflop play along with the power of position (he generally followed the conventional wisdom of playing his hands much more strongly when potentially out of position) to force his oppenents to make massive and profitable (for him) mistakes.
After giving it some though, this actually began to make sense to me. One of the keys to profitable poker playing is adjusting to your opponents tendencies and thereby forcing them to make costly mistakes. By becoming slightly more loose-passive postflop, you are optimally adjusting to the hyperaggressive preflop tendencies that currently dominate the poker world. Furthermore you become more effective at hiding the strength of your hand as opponents have a much toughter time determining which flops hit you and which ones you struck out on. You are able to create confusion in their assignment of hand ranges and force into difficult spots as they play for pots out of position when they have little to no idea where they stand.
There is some merit to a knowledgable and skilled person playing in this manner. Afterall, some of the worlds top pros such as Daniel Negraneua and Phil Helmuth utilize this strategy to great effect. They play many smaller pots, generally calling or raising small, and use their superior poker instincts and postflop skill along with position to slowly pickoff and wear down their oppenents. The key to poker is to make adjustments and this just may be the most optimal adjustment to make in today's poker environment.
