Tight Aggressive Style in Poker
Monday, February 14, 2011 by ARSITEKTUR
If you’ve read our basic poker article about categorizing your opponents, you should already be aware of the 4 typical playing styles in poker using the following labels: tight, loose, passive, and aggressive. In that article, the tight-aggressive strategy was described as the most effective strategy for beating low limit cash games, single table tournaments (SNGs), and low buy-in multi-table tournaments (MTTs). How do you play a tight-aggressive style? Let’s break it down.Playing Tight
The first step towards playing a tight-aggressive style is playing tight. Playing tight means getting involved in less hands and folding more hands preflop. Probably the biggest mistake that new poker players make is playing too many hands. Being selective about the hands you play will plug this leak and increase your winnings immediately.
The most important thing that being selective does is it helps you conserve chips by folding bad hands right away and not trying to chase second best hands. For example, folding hands like Ks8s helps you avoid going broke when your opponent makes an A-high flush to your K-high flush and saves you chips when the flop comes king high and you are facing a stronger kicker.
A lot of the money you win or lose playing poker will occur during hands that don’t go to showdown. You will save yourself money by simply playing tight and folding marginal hands preflop, instead of folding them after you’ve paid to see the flop and missed it yet again. Playing a tighter range of hands is also helpful for maximizing your credibility when employing the second part of a tight-aggressive strategy, which is playing aggressive.
Being Aggressive
Being aggressive in poker means constantly being on the attack. Your main actions are betting, raising and reraising. You rarely check or call. You don’t wait for your opponents to act and then react to their actions. As an aggressive player, you want the other players at the table to be forced to react to your actions.
A basic tenant of poker is that it takes a stronger hand to call a bet than it does to raise. Therefore, if your hand is good enough to call, it’s definitely good enough to raise. This forces your opponent to have to make the majority of the difficult decisions. This is a very important concept to remember when playing a tight-aggressive style.
Why the Tight-Aggressive Style is so Effective
The table image your create when implementing a tight-aggressive style is hard to combat. Your tight hand selection gives your opponents the impression that you only play strong, quality hands. It also makes your bluffs more effective. For example, your opponents will more apt to believe you have an overpair on a flop containing all low cards than they would against a looser player.
The aggressive component of the equation makes your hand strength difficult to read. By playing your strong hands, medium-strength hands, bluffs and draws aggressively by betting and raising, your opponents will have a difficult time putting you on a hand. If you maintain a uniform bet-size regardless of the strength of your hand, such as 2/3 to 3/4 of the pot, you will be able to further disguise your holdings.
Final Thoughts
The tight-aggressive style is the most important strategy new players should learn when they start playing poker. It combines the two most effective playing styles of poker and helps new players develop the fundamentals required to excel at poker. By playing tight, you will generally enter pots with an advantage and win more hands at showdown. By playing aggressively, you can keep control of the action and force your opponents to make the difficult decisions. The tight-aggressive style is the most optimal strategy for consistently beating low limit cash games and low buy-in SNGs and MTTs, so it’s definitely a style you’ll want to master as soon as possible.
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