Context:

Former midstakes PLO grinder, returning to poker after a hiatus. Switching to NLHE, currently working to build fundamentals (PioSOLVER and the whole shebang). The goal is to work my way up the NLHE stakes, and later try out live games, which necessitates some full ring competence. I'm interested in you guys' thoughts on full ring vs 6-max in general (but let's leave live play out of it, since that's a different thing altogether).

Now, back in the day when I was starting out (2005'ish) the consensus was that full ring was for nits, and that FR win rates were lower because of this "fact". It was as if people believed that playing nitty would somehow protect a mediocre opponent from losing to you. Now in 2016 we of course know that nittiness doesn't protect anyone from losing to good aggressive opponents, it's just that a nit by nature plays accidentally correct (or close to it) when he is seated early. Full ring is then the format that punishes him the least.

In play closer to the blinds the story is very different. Nittiness in the 6-max part of full ring (i.e. play involving play between the LJ to BB seats) should get you killed in a FR game where everybody else was playing well in all positions. But if everybody else is also too tight in late positions, our nit won't suffer (everybody would be swapping the same nit mistakes).

Fewer hands/hour lowers the hourly (although we can compensate, since FR is easier to multitable), but let's take the bb/100 as our metric.

The following seems obvious:

• Win rates in FR should by necessity be lower than 6-max, since we are adding three early seats with lower win rates than the four profitable 6-max seats.
• But the above statement only holds necessarily true when our opponents play all seats well (i.e. playing like good 6-max players in hands involving only the last 6 seats).

Now I (finally) have a some questions:

• Can it be said in 2016 that the average FR player is playing way too tight from the later positions? And that an experienced 6-max player should find plenty of exploitable opportunities in a FR game in play from LJ to BB?
• Can it be said that this could compensate for the bb/100 reduction we take (compared to 6-max) from having to play three additional early and not very profitable seats?

If so, a strong 6-max player should be able to do well in a nitty full ring game by doing things that would be unfamiliar to them. Opening extremely loose from BTN, defending the blinds much more correctly, and in general having greater experience playing wide ranges pre flop and post flop.

Am I on to something here? I have no experience from FR, it's been years since I played NLHE 6-max, and 6-max strategy has evolved rapidly since then. I kicked off my NLHE studies a few weeks back by watching Lefort's "6-max Concepts" video series, which must have been groundbreaking at the time, in that it demonstrated mathematically how loose correct play in and around the blinds likely should be. And these days we have solvers to work with as well. Now I am simply wondering if the FR population has paid attention.

Grateful for any thoughts you guys might have on the subject.