Luck will play a role

Second, luck will play a role in mixing up one’s play. No matter how tight one plays, they will occasionally get streaks of five or more hands where they start with premium holdings. Raising the pot several times in a row could brand a player as loose/aggressive, because few players would suspect that all those consecutive hands were in fact properly played. Finally, we come to the other underlying problem with loose calls or raises. To affect your image, you must show down your hand. Consider how often a hand like 96s misses the flop. Is it worth “advertising” your phantom loose tendencies if you must make several bad plays to show your hand? Remember, if you consistently take hands too far and bluff too much in the name of “unpredictability”, you are no longer playing tight/aggressive. While trying to deceive people into believing you are a loose/aggressive or loose/passive player, you may in fact become one! Even when you finally show down a poor hand, your opponents must notice your play and make a change in how they play against you. Also, if they reason deeply enough to consider that you might play an extra hand to “vary your play,” you have lost all advantage. In other words, a player good enough to pay attention could very well be good enough to see through your ruse. A player not good enough to see through your deception may not notice your ‘bad play’ in the first place. Earning a Bigger Pot It is often pointed out that it might be occasionally correct to limp-reraise with pocket Aces, or to raise with T9s from an early position, or a myriad of other plays contrary to standard practice. In fact, such advice is correct in specific circumstances. For example, if one or more players was raising every hand preflop (but not reraising), limping Aces with the intention of reraising might earn additional profit. Or, if the game was exceptionally tight, suited connectors might profit immediately because the chance of stealing the blinds is high (turning a marginal call/fold into a profitable raise). However, in these scenarios, the profit earned by playing the hand unconventionally is immediate. All this proves is that one must adjust their play to the game. The “correct” strategy has changed because there are extreme conditions. I have no quarrel with the need to adjust one’s play to earn as much money as possible, dependent on game conditions. However, if there is no immediate profit earned from a misleading play, then we are back to depending on our opponents’ observation skills to earn extra bets later in the session. If a limp-reraise with pocket Aces saves your opponents from making significant mistakes after the flop, the initial profit preflop may not actually increase overall profit. If none of your opponents will give you credit for strength when you raise from early position anyways, why raise with a weak hand to fool them? Limit poker is a game with finite edges. An opponent’s gaffe will result in a relatively small, fixed loss. So, the profit earned when hitting a miracle flop with a substandard hand is far outweighed by the losses incurred when the flop misses or gives the substandard hand a second-best hand. For example, if a player gives up a small bet (or more) five times out of six by limping with 74s in early position, they are going to have an impossible struggle to earn enough when they finally win a pot (while not losing much when second-best). And remember, without trying to make questionable moves, even tight/aggressive players will sometimes lay a bad beat on their opponent or make a play which appears to be incorrect. Most players will not analyze the point of view of the tight/aggressive player, so they will chalk up the bad beat or ‘bad reraise’ as the play of a flawed but fortunate player.

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