Still More LAG Practice

I've taken to treating my .50/$1 home game as my practice sessions. Small stakes make it easier to try some things out. Here are some of the things I've employed in the last few sessions.

1. Checkraise from the blinds on a dry board. This was against one of the few regulars in my game who even knows what a blind steal is. I can't even remember what I defended with, but the board was a bone-dry K73 rainbow or somesuch. I checkraised his cbet with air, knowing his range was too weak to continue most of the time. He flashed pocket tens - pretty strong, I'm not maniac enough to get him to try and continue with second pair. Yet

2. 3bet/squeeze AQs as a semi-bluff. Usually a flat from me - keep the dominated aces in the pot and all that. But once a third person entered the pot, I heard the cash register cha-ching and decided I just couldn't leave those 8 big blinds lying out there, could I? Our home game features very little 3betting, usually QQ+ only (not even ace-king), so my 3bet got a bunch of credit.

3. Open from early position (6-handed). Flop bottom pair and a flush draw. Take a Bet, Bet, BIG BET line as my flush comes in. Smoke top pair for half his stack.

4. My favorite hand of the session. A few orbits after the hand before, open , get the same player calling me. Completely whiff the board, but cbet anyway. He check/calls. The turn brings in a club flush, I still have nothing. But I make another solid bet and villain turbo-mucks, knowing I can bet the flush draw before having it.

5. Call with on the button, multiway pot. Flop top 2 pair on an board. Original raiser leads, folds to me, I re-raise to $20.

He looks at me for a few seconds. "You got a set or a flush draw this time", he asks, then flashes an ace and folds.

Exactly.

My 2014 goal is to take shots at $2/$5, and with a little luck, stick there. Keeping some plays like these fresh in my toolbox should help me reach that goal.