The two most important words in poker: Tight-Aggressive
Playing styles refers to the percent of hands dealt a player plays and whether the player bets and raises more or less frequently than he calls.
Players most often fall into four types:
- Loose-Passive
- Loose-Aggressive
- Tight-Passive
- Tight-Aggressive
Three of these playing styles feel very natural to people with certain personality types. One of the styles feels very unnatural to almost everyone. You might have guessed that this is the one playing style that allows you to consistently make money in poker.
The Loose – Tight Spectrum.
Looseness refers to how many combinations of starting hands a player will play instead of folding. An extremely loose player will play every two hole cards he is dealt, but even playing thirty percent of hands is loose.
A very tight player only plays premium hands such as AA, AK, KK, QQ, and very good hands such as KQs, QJs, JJ and ten, ten, called TT.
The Passive-Aggressive Spectrum.
Aggressiveness refers to the player’s tendency to bet, raise and re-raise with whatever cards he chooses to play. A very aggressive player almost never limps, but open raises often, continuation bets often and re-raises raisers often. A very passive player does not bet or raise often, even with a very good hand. If he stays in a hand, he calls when he has good cards or folds when he has bad hands.
When I say an aggressive player bets or raises “often,” I mean in relation to whatever number of hands he plays. If he is very tight, playing only ten percent of hands and he raises nine of those ten percent, he is aggressive. If a player were to play forty-five percent of hands and raise nine of those forty-five percent, he would be passive.
We could infer that he is raising a similar range strong hands that the tight player raises, but playing more than three times as many as that by calling.
How they Play and When they Win
Briefly, here is what happens when these four basic types of players play. You will recognize them as players you have encountered if you’ve played for very long:
Loose-passive players
Loose-Passives are very common in low-stakes games.. To them, the blinds are like antes to be put in for every hand. They hate folding pre-flop so they call nearly every blind and pre-flop raise and they stay in pots that they have little chances of winning until the river dashes their hopes of turning that eight-five off-suit that flopped bottom pair into two pair.
When you hear the word “fish,” it most often it refers to a loose-passive player. Those are the players you want at your table.
The downside of playing against loose-passive opponents is that their passivity hides their strength when they do get a big hand. They will get aces with the same frequency as anyone else does and when they get them, they will never fold them. The most passive of them will never bet or raise them either and when you bet, bet, bet with your top pair/strong kicker, they will call, call, call with their over-pair.
When they get your stack, they will congratulate themselves on how cleverly they slow played you.
They will also hold onto drawing hands right up to the river, which is great for you except when they hit. They cannot be pushed off a flush draw on the flop or the turn by an over-bet so they they are guaranteed to see the river. They will not even know you made an over-bet unless it is online because at live games, they do not keep track of the pot.
Still, these are the players you want to play against. You will make much more money from their busted draws than you will lose to their filled draws.
Tight-Passive Players
Tight-Passive Players follow the strategy of fold, fold, fold, until the best cards come to them. When they have good cards, they don’t raise, but hope that unsuspecting players will raise them and they can call. If they have a starting hand that is strong but not made, such as ace-king, they will fold if it misses the flop.
Tight-Passives are good opponents because they are easy to spot. Good players don’t give them action when they finally bet or raise because they only do that with the nuts or a very strong hand.
Loose-Aggressive Players
Bad Loose-Aggressive Players play lots of hands and raise, raise, raise. At their extremes, they are the bane of all other styles of players except other loose-aggressives who love trading big pots back and forth with them. They play about half their hands, or more, so they can’t be hand-read and their favorite play is to go all-in as a bluff.
They are often frustrating players to play against. They punish you for bluffing by re-raising, often as a re-bluff.
Bad Loose-Aggressives can be beaten by good players, but it is not as easy as beating fish. You have to realize that they are being aggressive with such a wide range of hand that it is often profitable to call them with hands you might normally fold or raise.
Calling them down street by street can often win you their stacks. But it takes experience and study to know when to do this.
When a loose-aggressive player is good, they are often very good. Professional poker players often play a loose-aggressive style, especially against amateur players who are their bread and butter.
They are good because they play both the mathematical game of poker and the psychological game of poker. If you are currently learning poker through the short-stacking strategy I advocate for beginners, following The Plan, you are playing a mathematical game. There is psychology, but the psychology is built into the math of the default strategy.
The more you learn, the more you will incorporate psychology into you game, which will allow you to loosen up.
Good loose-aggressives develop reads on players at the table. They open with a wide range and they often bet the flop and the turn with missed hands. They know that the turn can be a confusing street for less experienced players so they often check-raise there.
They will raise you when you are unsure of your hand and fold when you are sure. They often raise silly hands pre-flop and beat your strong pair hand with the unlikeliest of two-pair or straight.
The best short-term strategy for dealing with good loose-aggressive player who is vexing you is to change tables. Their unpredictable play makes them unprofitable. Online, you can often spot a good loose-aggressive player by the large pile of chips they have compared to the minimum buy-in.
A long-term strategy is to become a good loose-aggressive player yourself, as discussed in Keep Calm Re-Buy, Volume II.
Tight-Aggressive Players
Tight-Aggressive Players are the most common long term winners in poker. They play playable hands with a good bluff frequency. When they miss the flop, they fold or they bluff. They rarely call to see the turn or river and then only with a plan. They plan to make money in the long run.
Long run thinking is what makes long-run winners.
This is the style you learn when you play the default short-stack strategy explained in the book, Poker Beginner to Poker Winner in 1,000 hands. Available on Amazon as a paperback or Kindle.
A downloadable .pdf is available for a much lower price here.
Tight-aggressive is not a style for the faint-hearted or a person with a short bankroll because a tight-aggressive will often raise in a situation in which they have less than a fifty-fifty chance of winning. Often, the math makes that correct. By making these mathematically correct decisions over and over, along with forcing folds through aggressive play, a tight aggressive player earns money in the long run regardless of whether he wins more showdowns than he loses.
Personality Types and Playing Styles
Playing Styles are caused by and reveal people’s desires and fears. Understanding these drives help you beat them.
Alan n. schoonmaker, ph.d, The psychology of poker, 2000
In his seminal work on playing styles, Alan Schoonmaker posited that people’s playing styles were a function of their personality and therefore understanding their personality could help predict their playing styles.
As examples, calling stations are calling stations because they like to get along with others but not stand out among them, tight-passive players are unsociable loners and play the game to pass the time so they are more interested in making their stack last than winning money with it, loose-aggressive players are outgoing attention and thrill seekers, etc.
I do not doubt the validity of that model at all for live games in the year 2000. However since the 2003 explosion in the popularity of poker on television and online poker, I would say that most people’s playing styles are based on their knowledge of the game rather than on personality.
If that is true, then when we are playing a against loose-passive calling station a better explanation of their playing style would be that they are a beginner rather than that they like to get along with everyone. This is especially true online.
With the wealth of material about poker strategy available online, most online players past the absolute beginner stage will have read, heard or seen that the tight-aggressive playing style is the winning playing style for beginners. That is why there are far fewer fishy loose-passive players online than in years past. That there are any at all, is likely due to beginners not internalizing the lessons they have seen about tight-aggressive play. They may have a hard time letting go of the idea that they should “at least see the flop.” Or they may understand the strategy superficially, but not have the desire or discipline to play it consistently.
In live games, I have observed a variety of personalities among poker players and the best predictor of their playing style is not how outgoing or introverted they are, but their knowledge of the game. The best way to measure their knowledge of the game is to listen to them discuss poker. There is a wealth of information to be gained from opponents just by listening to and analyzing their table and off-table talk. Players who would never show their hand when they do not have to and who work hard on their poker faces, regularly give away information when out of hands that can be effectively used against them.
In particular when a player criticizes your play, they are telling you how they would have acted in the situation they are commenting on and almost certainly being completely honest. They want to show off that they know more about poker than you. Do not take offense, take advantage.
I once had a player lose a hand to me when I had king queen and he had top pair on the nine-high flop. I c-bet my over-cards and spiked my queen. He saw my cards at showdown and blurted, “you bet the flop with nothing!” I didn’t have nothing, I had two over-cards. Now, he had just told me that he doesn’t know the difference between missing the flop and flopping two over-cards, and that he doesn’t understand that frequently a pre-flop aggressor should cbet even if he does miss. Which means that if he ever bets the flop, he has at least connected with it.
Choosing Your Playing Style
The Default Short Stack Strategy will allow you to learn and practice tight-aggressive play. That is the only realistic choice for a beginner. The only other winning strategy is that of the good loose-aggressive, a playing style that requires a large amount of experience.
As tight-aggressive short-stackers, we only play about fifteen percent of hands and raise almost all of them, often going all-in preflop. To improve on that solid strategy, we have to learn to build our stack, open that range, and to play some of the hands in less aggressive ways to induce your opponents to call more often.
The key to playing tightly, is to know which starting hands represent a tight opening range and in what positions they are playable. The fastest way to learn them is to read the chapters on premium and playable hands in the book, Poker Beginner to Poker Winner in 1,000 Hands.
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