You might find more room for 3x and 4x raises instead of the standard 5x with a variety hands. Not that your raises should be based on hand strength, but also position.

Say there is one slightly loose limper (Ax K8s is fine to look at a flop) and you are mid-position with a hand like KQo, 88, QJs or something else that is worth a limp, raising 3x to 4x here is a fair play. The BB will be tempted to call and a 1/2 pot to 2/3 pot continuation bet should still have the desired effect.

Of course this doesn't work if your in a bad position to loose aggressive players sitting on your left. But if you have tighter players that are tending to respect your play, you may well buy position, or force a real hand to reveal itself.

Mixing up your AA or KK with slightly weaker raises especially if you showdown some winners with previous weaker holdings when making the same raise may even induce serious action preflop. This will hold more true from the almost good players with TT-QQ that now have a "read" on you.

Naturally you will be playing more post-flop holdem with this sort of weak raising, and you have to be comfortable in your read and working the board. With the smaller raises the pots should be managable and even if you have to give up a few of them, they should set you up for the big score. If you feel they are on to you or catching on to you, adjust and tighten back down before making this play TPGK will start seeing a showdown vs. your overpairs and then it is back to open season on raising more dubious hands for a bit.

I find I get too much respect happens to me playing online from the big stack and that these kinds of loose and aggressive plays often add enough doubt to my big hands that I wind up taking another stack. The worse that happens against opponents that respect me too much is that I take down a bunch of limps or a small to medium pot on the flop. If you are a good post flop player you shouldn't ever loose a massive pot unless your hand warrants it. It isn't easy switching to this style when you are first doing it, you are going to have to force yourself to pounce on pots and bet, even Doyle in SS says it was hard for him to adjust to playing this way.

Or it could be time to take some of your winnings on a Vegas trip

Ais... I've generally had similar problems that you have... Basically, not getting paid off big when I hit my hands... A few things I'm considering trying...

1. First off... are there any other places you can play..? Obviously, a bunch of TAGs or good LAGs are NOT the games you're wanting to play at... Although there are always TONS of fish at my games, once or twice, especially late at night, the game turned primarily into a rockfest... It just doesn't seem as fun to me...

2. If you HAVE to play at these games, I've found that I've made a little more money actually becoming a little more tight/passive than loose/aggressive... Let people get a little more wiggle room... give em a little rope to hang themselves... This method has the possibility of being a little more risky, as they can always catch something to kill you.. But, for me at least, it's paid off a little against people who have a lot of respect for me... For instance, the game where you had KK, raised, and he folded his Qs... If you flat call, he's gonna throw out another $75-150, you bump him up then, he may push, putting you on AJ, or he may fold and you get paid off a little more... If you were pretty sure you had him beat, you probably should've taken another card... I know it sounds against everything you (and I) believe in... But it seems to work... Another example...

EP tight player ($700) raises to $20, bozo in MP ($500) calls, I call w/ ...

FLOP ... EP bets $35, bozo calls, I raise to $100... They both fold... EP had JJ, bozo had AJ... Later, EP told me that I should slow it down a little and let MP catch something... That way, I would've taken his whole stack... I think I would've gotten AT LEAST another couple dollars out of EP also, as long as a scare card doesn't hit the turn...

Another... flopping 2pr in a raised pot... Guy who you're pretty sure is on AK continuation bets, you call instead of raising, hoping that he turns a K or A to keep him in...

Like I said, its a little more dangerous... But, if you're pretty sure you can get away from a hand, which I know you can, I think it's worth a try...

The problem with me LAGging it up is that no one really buys it, and I end up stealing VERY small pots... I'll win 5 or 6 $30 pots... Then get called down when someone actually has a hand, and will lose $200+ on that one hand...

Not sure if that helps...

I agree that a good LAG style can win a lot of money in the long run... I'm just not wired that way... So, the effort I make to make my plays LAG end up screwing around with my circuitry, and I almost ALWAYS end up making a play I shouldn't have made... I lose some reads on players, or I end up trying to bluff off a calling station ...

It's probably just cause I'm not a good enough player yet... And I think that an occasional LAG touch is a DEFINITE good thing... It's just a little too much for me to go full-bore LAG...

Sorry if this was rambling...

I think I'm going to start a separate thread on some LAG plays I'm considering. As noted, I do really well, when I get a clear LAG situation, and it's largely due to not going crazy about it, combined with a rock-like image.

What I really don't like about making smaller raises is twofold: First, I don't like telegraphing my hand by introducing another "class" of raise. Secondly, I don't like not thinning the field adequately when I do raise.

I'd really like to stick with the "2-caller" rule, which I really picked up more from Rolf Slotbloom a while back when we were discussing this on UPF. It's basically this: Whatever the quantity is at this table that is likely to give you 2 callers, that's the amount to raise.

At these tables, for me, it's generally $20 from EP, $25 if I have a limper or so in front of me, possibly as much as $35 or $40 if the whole table has limped, and I'm in LP (also these live straddles can influence it heavily). $15 is generally a weak raise in this game. While I don't have any objection to 3xBB in principle, I only make that raise in LP if it's folded around to me, and I have a hand I want to play (and in LP, that can be anything from KJo to AA).

But I do have some other ideas on which I'd really appreciate some feedback. I really think a part of the struggle at the moment is just a bad run of cards, but I also need to start making more "moves" (I am making some, but I'm convinced I'm missing some others).

Basically, my good sessions right from the beginning have been due essentially to the following:

1) Sets win and get paid off
2) I can leverage someone big PF on my AA.

Bad ones are where I don't set or my sets lose. Well, this week, I had 4 sets that I can think of over 35 hours (which seems pretty thin). 3 of them lost, but I laid them down successfully (in all cases, I actually know for a fact that I was beat, as they turned them over) in 2 cases. On one I lost my stack to the flush draw (that was the decisive hand really). And on another I won a medium pot ($90) to an overpair.

And AA never really hit at the right time. Early in the week, I did flop a straight with a suited connector and got paid off by a shortish stack, but that was really my only big hand that went well.

So, part of it is definitely just the way the cards have been hitting (I should have had more sets than 4 after probably around 1,000 hands), but I think I need to start considering some moves, too. I'll try to run some ideas past you guys. I don't know, considering it all in review, maybe dramatic strategy revisions aren't called for. That's actually a pretty rough run with 4 sets in 1,000 hands, 3 of which lose. Maybe I should instead feel good that I only lost $100 for the week... ??

Well, on the table change option, this is really the only NL game within reasonable driving distance on a regular basis unless I want to move up to 5/10, which I definitely intend to do. But I don't want to do it during a losing cycle, and I really don't feel like I have the bankroll to play that game right either (from what I've heard about the two that are close, they are clearly very high swing type games).

With very few exceptions, I don't consider these guys real eagles. There are only 2 that I've played with who I would put in the "extremely good" category. Probably another 50% is just "good player" with various kinds of mistakes (too passive, too loose, etc.). The remaining 50% is just "not horrible" for the most part, with a few that are really bad thrown in. I don't think that's a game that needs to be avoided.