Hijinks78

Brief history of myself. I played professionally when it was easy to do so, for about 5 years, 15 years ago. I played a lot of limit hold em and no limit as high as 5-10. Long story short, I was burned out, no longer improving as a player, had an unhealthy lifestyle and was getting older. I made the very good decision to go back to work. I played one session of poker for the next ten years, as I just didn't feel like it. Fast forward to maybe 6 months ago, and I stumbled upon a cash game live stream on you tube. I got the itch to play again and was surprised to see that you could play online in the US. Anyhow, the game had changed so much in 10 years! Suddenly there was so much to learn and I was interested again. I deposited a very small amount and started playing some 5nl on ignition. Ive been playing maybe 10 hours a week or so and am now playing 50nl for the most part and have mostly been enjoying playing for fun and learning about the game again (which I stopped doing when I played professionally). I believe Im a winning player at 50nl online but it is still a little early to tell. anyhow this long intro is just a way of filling you guys in on my level of expertise/lack of expertise as the case may be. This Monday-Wednesday I was given a free hotel room at a casino a few hours from my house for a work related event. They only ran a 1-2NL game with a $300 max buy in. This game was really good, all three days. Poker in general has changed so much, but this live 1-2 game was exactly the same as the best games were 15 years ago (at 40 I was one of the younger guys, like I used to be). Lots of open limping and extremely passive play, with very few exceptions. Regularly we would go to the flop 6 handed. people would limp along and even if someone made it $12 or so, everyone would often call. By the end of the weekend I was questioning what made sense and what didnt. I started pondering whether having an open limping range could be a better option than opening for a raise in certain ep situations (although I could never bring myself to implement an open limp). Doing routine things like 3 betting suited connectors and AXs a percentage of the time, seems to go down in value quite a bit, and I basically took that out of my playbook by the second day, and now Im wondering if there was still value in those sort of plays (online i use a random number generator and live I planned on using the second hand on my watch). It just felt like the way to make money was to flop the best hand and extract every bit of value you can from it, so i reverted back to a very old school style of ABC poker. It was very easy to make thin value bets in situations where you might normally have to worry about opening the door for a bluff. small stabs at the pot when you I thought no one was likely to have anything were profitable, but every time I barrelled multiple times, it seems that it did not work out. People just didnt like to fold. So my question to you guys is what sort of changes do you make to your strategy in a game like this? a nearly 100% exploitive strategy seems the way to go and very thin value bets and very big folds seem mandatory at many times. There are very few three bets in the game, and I found myself 3 betting much less than I would against tough players. I certainly could have started three betting a lot and tried to shake the game up and get people out of their comfort zone, and perhaps I should have, but playing a TAG ABC style seemed like such a profitable, low variance option. Anyhow, I apoligize for making this so long. I get very long winded. I could have literally just posted "What strategy changes do you make in an extremely loose and passive game?"

I have not played poker in about 12 years and have recently been getting back into it, in some low stakes online games, and a little bit of brick and mortar action. Poker strategy has, not surprisingly, really evolved in the last decade, and the average player seems much better than they were "back in the day". One thing that was commonly understood was the gap concept and people were very hesitant to do things like call a middle position raise in late position with hands like KQo. This seems to have changed somewhat and I am seeing many more competent players flatting with this sort of hand. Could anyone explain how the understanding of "the gap concept" has changed, evolved, or been discarded? It seems obvious to me (and I may be wrong) that it would still be very valid in hot/cold/all in type situations like often occur in tournaments but it is less clear the ramification of flatting with KQo type hands in cash games with deeper stacks (compared to tournaments not necessarily deep by cash standards). any thoughts would be appreciated

After a long lay off (about 12 years) from poker I have started getting back into it. Turns out the game kept progressing without me...I put a little money on ignition and have been playing the low stakes zone games for a few months with moderate success. What I am wondering is what sort of adjustments you guys make in these anonymous games? It seems like there are opportunities to do things like change preflop raise sizes based on what you are trying to accomplish that would potentially narrow your range in a traditional setting (how much of a concern that should be may be questionable at low stakes but the possibility at least exists). The value of bluffing preflop with suited connecters and one gappers seems slightly diminished as well, as you lose the image aspect of the play/broadening your range in your opponents eyes etc. Some people seem to click the autofold button in the BB so I wonder if raising from the SB should be mandatory if it is folded to you (min raise?). What adjustments do you guys like to make in these games?