Conversations at Home Depot

The fake rock on the foundation of my house fell off during construction repairs 2 years ago.  I kind of hate it anyway, so I painted the south side black.  Unfortunately it extends around to the front, and matches the rock on the driveway entry.  So, I needed to repair it.  That led to a trip to Home Depot where I wandered aimlessly in the construction materials area until I bumped into an American Legion poker regular shopping for ladders.  We chatted for a few minutes about poker and I of course whined about my latest bad beats.  He said, "You play too tight".  I argued a bit about this, saying that of course I do bluff and perhaps craftily was using my tight image to steal pots.  We talked some about the "value" of advertising by showing your hand featuring the nuts.  Lately my argument is that no one should ever show a hand unless called under penalty of buying the entire table a drink.

So, thinking of being a tight player brought up the words of "China Bob", who claimed that he did not play "tight", but played "right".  He is one of the tightest players in the morning crew who are nearly all basically as tight as bark on a tree.  That got me thinking about the wisdom of tight play.  Tight/aggresive play has always seemed to be the best route to poker success, but it seems that the game has evolved into loose calls with trash hands that snap the big holdings with some regularity.  Lost a bunch of chips this morning playing a SNG with AQ raise and call by K9 off.  Could not get the king high flop to fold despite my big chip stack and repeated bets.  So much for big bluffs!  But seriously, how do these players rationalize calling big raises from the tightest player at the table?  Implied odds????

Every once in a while, I try playing loose/aggressive poker and honestly have had some mixed success.  Raises UTG with medium suited connectors, QJ, and such with decent continuation bets have often paid off.  Humph.