Playing 'Out of Character' .. Be a maniac for once.

Culchie

Taking this cue from one of Dev's posts on Ante's Up about Patrick Antonio apparently running riot on the tables in Deauville re-raising everything in sight.


Jeez, I'd love to do be able to do this....but it would be out of character for me, outside my comfort zone.


I think most players, even the 'pros' have playing styles.

So do any of you guys have any problems playing 'out of character' and completely changing your playing style.

I know table dynamics come into this.

Tips/Advice/Thoughts/Advantages/Disadvantages etc ???

TacT

I've done it on several occasions but most of the time it was to blow off some steam more than anything. It's hard to find the right balance of controlled aggression but it can be very effective indeed. More often than not it ended up costing me money but one day I seemed to have it fine tuned just right and it made me over $600 playing the .25/.50 tables on tribeca.

You need to be hitting the cards, people need to think that you're bluffing and you need some of the bluffs to work and payoff. I always find it tough to stay in control so I usually resume my abc, by the book game.

I think the most important things needed to make it effective are great reading skills and a large bankroll for the stakes that you are playing.

ocallagh

I sometimes switch to ultra aggressive online, but only in small cash games where I don't care about losing my buy-in.. or rebuy tournaments where I know the majority won't rebuy. I don't have too much trouble switching to this style, but I have to be in the right frame of mind..

If I'm tired or not paying attention I can easily raise/re-raise half the pots.. It's when I care too much about the tournament that I find it tough to play LAG..

I rarely play very ultra aggressive live.

hotspur

Yep I've tried hard to become an aggressive player but when push comes to shove it's just not me and I have trouble staying with it. I don't play tournies much but when I used to play them a bit on Stars and I found myself as chip leader I could never bring myself to bully a table because it is so fundamentally against my nature to bully (though some people on this forum who know my play from another competitive card game may disagree ). In Schoonmaker's book The Psychology of Poker he says that being tight aggressive isn't a natural style and it must be learnt. I think he's wrong, I know players who are naturally inclined towards that style because of who they are.
I think the extent to which you can be successful at playing whatever style suits the table is largely dependent on how emotional a person you are. If you react emotionally fairly easy to things then I think it's more likely that your true self will assert itself at the poker table when push comes to shove. One possible solution is to adopt the Oren Halling approach (H@££ingol on Stars, Hasan Slask on UB, ? on Prima) which is to regimentise (not a real word) one's betting - X preflop, Y on the flop, Z on the turn everytime. Consensus seems to be that it works against the less good players.
It's certainly a thread that would be interesting to read other players' experience of alright.

Dub13

I will tell you what freaks me out abit...when a known maniac starts playing Out of Character and is tight as fcuk.It always throws me for a while.

Western_sean

If you can come across the right table I think this is about the most fun you can have playing poker. :cool:

I wouldn't do it often but sometimes I go down a couple of limits and LAG it up for an hour or 5. If you get lucky on the first few pots they will be very slow to come chasing your big bets - even when they do you'll suck out on them sometimes - and once you have a couple of buyins lead on tables with a capped buyin you can nearly play any 2 cards against the smaller stacks.

Try it! It completely makes up for days when your set of aces run into quad queens on the flop at Vegas Baby Poker!

cardshark202

I thought changing your playing style was a fairly mandatory thing. Reacting to the table etc.. Kind of like changing gears in a tournament. If you can only play one way, you can become pretty predictable.

Dub13

cardshark202 wrote:

I thought changing your playing style was a fairly mandatory thing. Reacting to the table etc.. Kind of like changing gears in a tournament. If you can only play one way, you can become pretty predictable.

Of course it is,we all change gears and widen our starting hand requirement's etc etc.But I think Culchie is talking about taken it to the extreme and being a lunatic.

Gholimoli

i don’t know what exactly out of character means here.
even though every one has a particular style but i don’t think any successful player can say ,im tight ,or aggressive or ultra aggressive.
all of the above may work one time or another but will never make you a consistent winner.
aggression is needed simply because most flops and other cards miss most hands. you need to be aggressive to take advantage of this concept.
at the same time you need to control your aggression for those flops that do not miss hands.im generally an aggressive player .what i mean by this is i try not to be afraid of betting and over betting when i know villain does not have much. for a tight player i suppose this would be out of character but its a requirement of the game.
the more you perfect this sense of knowing when your opponent is weak and when pots can be taken away ,the more success you will have IMO.
alot of people said they go over aggressive when they don’t care if they loose the buy in or loose the tourney and it works for them sometimes.
i think if you get to a level where your not doing it because you don’t care but because you understand the concepts then you will become a very though opponent. if you realize that the other person is just as afraid of busting out as you are and doesn’t really wanna go home early then you will play accordingly and will bet the hand as oppose to checking.
this works the other way too, when some one is showing resistance then chances are they are strong ,because what comforts people in these situations and brings them out of their shell and makes them bet and bet more , is a strong hand .
this is what ive been working on really, I think tourney play has alot of concepts in it that has nothing to do with your cards and their cards.
i know alot of people have said that before and its in a lot of books ,but i think im finally starting to understand it.
The idea is make other peoples uncomfort zone your own comfort zone.

DeVore

I think its best not to have a character to play out of. Of course we all do and everyone has an A game but its best to try and react to your table.

That said, I LOVE picking my moments and going maniacal, but only for like 3 hands. I love nothing better then to sit tight for 3 orbits and then squeeze play a big raise and a reraise. 90% of the time I've AA or KK here. 10% of the time I have 94o

I do admire this in some players, eg Marq O'Neill seems to be able to do it with annoying ease. It takes remarkable skill in reading people to be able to know when to push and when to fade away... Its NOT repeat NOT just about coming out firing, any trained, shaved monkey can do that. Gus Hansen has a lot of answer for creating wannabees who think its made cool to make crazy players. They don't have the skill to back it up though.

DeV.

roryc

I do this in a lot of games. I play tight aggressive and build up a nice tank, then just change gears and play super LAG. Usually works for me. I do feel uncomfortable though playing outside of character.

One thing I've found is that I will tend to play A LOT looser if I know someone at the table. I noticed this the other night at the Drogheda game.

corblimey

This is definitely one part of my game I'm not happy with. I can usually switch gears at random moments (when I've just won a big hand, on the bubble etc) but more often than not, my timing is off, and my 94o pre-flop raise is called by the rock with QQ. I never try it when I'm not a considerable chip leader (a rare event in itself), so going LAG and losing is never the end of the my tourney, but it's still something I need to practice.

kincsem

On PokerStars I would play about 25% of hands. But once I won a 432 player FPP tourney where shortly before the finish I looked at my stats and found I had played 61% of hands. This was when it was still nine player tables. I was calling flops with 3 to a straight or 3 to a flush and filling allsorts (trips, two pair, straights, flushes). If I didn't fill I would bet anyway. But this only works if you have a stack and the table are terrified of having to put in all their chips.

That was my one day as a lion.

Imposter

DeVore wrote:

I do admire this in some players, eg Marq O'Neill seems to be able to do it with annoying ease. It takes remarkable skill in reading people to be able to know when to push and when to fade away...

Quite a few boardsies can be quite good at this imo. That's based mostly on those 10$ MTT's on Pokerstars we used to have but that could be skewed a little because of the small buy-in.