Thoughts on the Ultra-Nit
I’m sure you’re all familiar with this player; he (or she) is a staple of micro-stakes NL games. Even if you don’t have Pokertracker - and I don’t - you can tell when you have an ultra-nit at your table. The defining characteristics:
- Refuses to play a full stack
- Plays about 10-12% of hands
- Min-raises with monsters
Last night I played with one of the worst nits I’ve ever seen, which is stiff competition at the Full Tilt micro stakes. In almost two hours of play, I saw him show down five hands: KK, QQ, AK, AQ, and KJ. Faces cards only. No other pairs. No blind steals: he open-folded the button almost every time it was folded around to him.
I’m not saying nittiness (?) can’t be profitable. In fact, the data collected at AbsolutePokerCheats.com confirms what we all know: a range of styles can be winners or losers. The data mined for that site shows pretty much no correlation between VPIP and winrate: this chart shows winning and losing players at 10, 20, 40, even 60 VPIP. Above about 45, the correlation starts to go negative, and above 70VPIP there are no winning players.
There’s nothing wrong with ultra-nitty play, I just find it incredibly tedious to play against. I’d almost prefer one of those TAG types who re-pops your raises constantly in position or three-bets you from the blinds every time, because at least you’re playing some kind of game with this player. It’s more of a meta-game, but you’re both participating. Against the ultra-nit, he’ll just fold every time you raise, except when he has a monster and min-raises back. Then you call the min-raise and fold if you miss. It’s not exactly the thrill of battle.
Do you love nits or hate them?
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Comments
I hate nits. Frankly, I would rather play against a TAG who I am inferior to because, as you said, you actually get to PLAY against them. In a tourney, I would imagine playing against a nit would be beneficial because it is an easy blind to steal. But in cash games where stealing the blinds is pretty pointless, nits are a nuisance 100% of the time.
There are short stack microstakes NL bots on some sites. You could have been playing against one.
You can exploit these types very easily. Just minraise their blinds every time and stay out of their way when they raise into a pot pre unless you have pot/implied odds to bust them
Was there any chance he was Multi Tabling…