Aggression (Sklansky and Online pro's)

[Aisthesis]

[Aisthesis]

[Notorious_JC]

[Stoneburg]

I decided to experiment a big with a more aggressive style. Keep in mind that I am already playing quite aggressively, with an aggression factor of about 6/3/2. Here's my normal stats:

vpip: 18
PFR: 13

Won when saw flop: 45%
Went to SD: 26%
Won at SD: 52%


I didn't really loosen up much, but I really looked for opportunities to be aggressive and after 1k hands my stats look like this:

vpip: 19
PFR: 16

Won when saw flop: 54%
Went to SD: 26%
Won at SD: 53%


Normally I will bet or raise after raising preflop about 65% of the time. Today, I was betting or raising ~80%.

Other than the slightly larger amount of preflop raises, and the significantly higher aggression on the flop, I think my biggest change was my 3-betting. I was 3-betting very light indeed, especially against loose raisers (>12% pfr) and CB-ing religiously in those circumstances if called (about 2/3 of pot).

I was surprised how often people would fold to my 3-bets actually. And when they didn't, they would more often than not fold to my CB. Before this I was wary of whether a liberal 3-bet strategy would really be profitable. If someone raises to $4 and I re-raise to $14 they will have to fold like 75% of the time for me to show an outright profit and that just seemed unlikely. In reality, I think the number was pretty close to that. AT least way above 50%. Of course, if they call you still have two ways to win the pot and with the amount of check/folding that went on post flop I can't really argue against 3-betting light being profitable.


Immediatly I can think of these pros and cons of playing like this:

Pros:
It's +EV if done correctly
It makes you more unpredictable and harder to play against
It forces you to improve your post flop game
It can put opponents on tilt (when you re-raise with A3s and flop two-pair against their AQ)

Cons:
It definetely increases variance
It gets you into harder situations and takes more effort to play correctly
There's a chance you will overvalue the tilt factor and make incorrect plays
It makes your opponents less predictable


The result after 1k hands was a $173 win for a ptbb/100 of 9 (which is around my usual). I did however make one huge mistake, where I raised a bunch of limpers with AQ and faced a re-raise. I misread the situation and thought he had limped behind other limpers, so I figured him for Axs or a mediup PP and pushed. But he was actually in the BB and had AA so... Without that hand my winrate would have been higher but I also managed a few suckouts so it evens out. Of course the sample size is way too small to draw any real conclusions but it was an interesting session.

[Cooper]