Poker Playing Styles
Have you ever noticed that when you sit down at a live cash game there are some people who seem to get involved in nearly every pot, and others who just seem to sit out and fall asleep most of the time? Well, you can traditionally categorise players into four different groups below. Their characteristics are based on how many hands they play pre-flop, and how aggressively they play their hands post-flop
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1) Loose-Passive Players (LP)
Loose-passive players have no patience, no skill, and play way too loose a range of hands pre-flop and can have an average flop percentage up to 40+%. New/amateur players tend to make up the majority of this category, and if you can identify one of these players then you should isolate them into as many pots as possible and overbet them with your big hands.
The bad thing for LP opponents is that they will bleed so many pre-flop by not folding weak hands like J7. They will get into a lot of trouble post-flop, lose big pots to TPTK, and you should ear mark these players as calling stations since they get involved in way too many showdowns. Another caveat is that they won’t bet large enough or hit back into opponents when they catch a strong hand like 3ok.
In short, LP opponents are the worst type of players and will always lose money when they sit down (gulp!)
2) Tight-Passive Players (TP)
Tight-passive players have a lot of patience, which is a good thing. They wait for premium hands like AQ or 1010 (i.e. top 10% of hands) before entering pots out of position, so you won’t see these players getting into a lot of action.
The problem with a TP approach is that they don’t exert enough aggression. They don’t 3bet hands like AA/KK that they really need to pre-flop; they also fail to fold limpers from LP and the CO. This means that every once in a while when they actually manage to hit a hand they can run into a lot of trouble if their opponent flops a set or flush. They fail to recognise the danger. In post-flop play, they fail to raise, value bet or check-raise their monster hands which means they don’t extract enough value when they’re ahead. Hence, playing against them is really easy and the best way to exploit them is to continually raise and bluff them off missed flops.
Overall, TP can be a small bit profitable on loose tables, but they are poor players none the less and they’ll lose a hell load of chips to solid aggressive opponents.
3) Tight-Aggressive Players (TAG)
TAG players have a similar pre-flop starting hand range to TP but the difference is that they have actually learned play their strong hands aggressively and maximise value from them. Whilst a strong TAG player only plays about 10% of his hands, he will always raise or 3bet premium hands like AK/JJ+ and eliminate limpers from the pot. A TAG mentality is to take the pot down as quickly as possible without making things complicated.
Although they are aggressive with big hands, TAGs will not bluff a lot of hands and they will get a lot of respect for their value bets and re-raises post-flop. I think that TAGs leave chips on the table by not bluffing/double-barrelling enough or taking advantage of their strong image at the table, but this is actually the most profitable style of play in the micro-low stakes tables.
I think that if you are playing anything from $0.01/$0.02 up to $0.10/$0.25, then you should be adopting a TAG strategy. The advantages of playing like this is that by sticking to playing strong hands, by the time you see the flop you are most likely beat your other opponents’ holdings.
4) Loose-Aggressive Players (LAG)
A successful LAG player like Gus Hansen is what every poker player aspires to be.
LAGs make the most money in poker because they are best at taking down dead money pots and have the wherewithal to play a large number of hands pre-flop. The main reason that they have the highest win-rate is because they are capable of maximising value when they miss the flop (i.e. bluffing) but they also have the ability to spot danger and fold crushed hands early on.
A typical LAG will play around 30% of his hands pre-flop and will 3bet about 10% of hands. A true LAG know how to use all the advanced concepts in the textbook, such as c-betting, bluff-raising, 3betting light, semi-bluffing, range-balancing and value betting the river. They exploit regs better than no one, and if you want to play mid-high stakes cash games than you are going to need to perfect a LAG playing style.
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