aggresive or tight play in tornaments

i am only a novice poker player who trying to learn a bit more about what is the right stategy,(aggresive or tight play). now i know the first thing i will be told is that it depends on the table, which is fine. but how do you pick your mark.
i do play real money, but only low stakes as i know im a fish waiting to be caught. so its all just a bit of fun at the moment.i do win a bit but not enough to say i make a profit, but could say i get good value for money.
but i see these aggressive players calling and betting hands that i consider crap and they are winning . is this just luck or is there a method to there risky bets?
any feed back or opinions on this would be good

You can be both Agressive and Tight. I think the two extremes you are comparing are Tight v. Loose (the money is 'loose'; they put money in the pot more frequently, whereas tight players have higher standards of volunteering their funds.

Agressive v. Passive refers to the size of your bets- aggressive means your bets are higher; you put pressure on your opponents. Yes being agressive means your gamble is larger- but its accepted as the best method of play (agressive play can make better hands fold; passive your cards are gonna need to win).

Enough with the ABC's. These players you talk about are called LAGs- Loose-Agressive players- they make large bets frequently (thus the loose part) and you wonder 'do they have good shlt all those times?" the answer is obviously no. If their standards for betting our lower than yours, than logically they gonna be betting / calling garbage that you would fold.

How are these loose players more profitable? Usually by exploiting their image. Yes, LAGs pick up small pots here and their by bluffing or forcing out what the perceive as 'weak / poorly skilled players with large bets. People get scared b/c they don't know if LAG is weak or strong cause they always bet, fold more. However you'll notice most money made by good Lags (not just the 'lucky' ones who suckout) is that they only put REALLY significant bets the pot when they got the goods.

Ex: LAG C-bets the pot every time headsup. Does he have a pair? usually not but who knows? u quiver + fold. He gets small pot. Eventually u get PO'd that he picks up all the pots, reraise him, give good resistance. He'll suprisingly fold more often then u predict. However when u tilt against LAG u might start playing 50BB hands with an overpair or TPTK (dangerous idea to play for stax with one pair) and see that LAG can get cards.

So basically LAG strat is to keep applying pressure whether wit the goods or air- this is good for picking up orphan pots and also inducing titly TAG player to give em all the chips when they dont belive his betting. LAGS DO cave to pressure- unless they really suck and will bet even in the midst of yuor continued pressure.

In short, yes method to madness for LAGS, some are good, most are getting good flops. One thing to remember is that if they scare u into being passive (small bets, only calling w/o raising) they wil have u by the balls. Agressive player (whether Tight or Loose) gains control of the hand, very key. Srry for the long ramble.

You also need to consider at the lower stakes, a ten player table, maybe one or two have an actual good hand. When 6 or 7 see a flop it's bound to hit 1 out of 3 hands, not always the good hands. So it will look like the garbage hands are winning, in reality one garbage hand is hitting the flop and winning but not the same guy playing the garbage hands. Teh money just keeps moving around the table. Wait for your good hands and then play aggressive. Then the chips will flow one way, into your stack and never back out.

thanks bigs for the correction on the terminology,
and your explaination, i will take this on board and hopefully do better in the tornaments
PS, i consistently win on ring games and have little or no luck on MTT, so i build up my money on ring games to try and crack a torny, im sure i play the same way. but out of 10 tornaments i have only ended up on the pay table once. any tips?

How big are the tourneys?

MTTs are very high variance. Depending on the size of the field, you will only make the FT a small percentage of the time.

thanks bigs for the correction on the terminology,
and your explaination, i will take this on board and hopefully do better in the tornaments
PS, i consistently win on ring games and have little or no luck on MTT, so i build up my money on ring games to try and crack a torny, im sure i play the same way. but out of 10 tornaments i have only ended up on the pay table once. any tips?

I'm the opposite I have made more at MTT than ring games. I play only NLHE: low blind ring or low buy in MTT. I am still a novice but I can spend about 8 hrs. a day playing, studing etc. and I keep learning and making mistakes. I think it will always be that way.

I have had times of good luck and bad. I find managing your luck (good or bad) is very important. And in MTT the good the bad and the ugly will come around.

In low buy in MTT I first size up the table. Early on there are too many players betting on weak hands, going all in, bluffing etc... So I'm very carefull of beting even with good hole cards especially if I am out of position. However if I have postion with good cards I will be more agressive.

When the blinds are small and no one is raising too much this is usually a good time to take more chances on your hole cards. You won't loose as many chips. And you have much to gain.

As the blinds increase I become more selective with the hole cards that I stay in with. Because there may still be a few too loose players. But once the overly loose guys have been knocked out things will settle down.

Also many players will size you up as too tight so when you do make a nice bet it makes them think you may have a better hand than you actually do.

One thing that I've noticed is many players who build up a decent stack early on and then loose some of their stack start playing different, kinda semi-tilting. I can tell they are discouraged, mad ....

Last week I finished 7th in a 1200 plus MTT after being down to 1100 chips at level 5. So I have learned not to panic when I get low. Just be more patient and selective.

The best thing I have learned is DON"T PANIC.

The pressure is on when the blinds are building and your stack is shrinking. I've gone so far as to put a piece of post it on my monitor covering the amount of my chip stack so that I will not be overly influenced by it's size.

However not considering you stack can be costly at times. I missed making the money one time (by 1) by going all in and loosing only to realize had I just folded I would have made my entry back and a small amount more. Another time I would have made the next pay level up but I missed that by just 1 finishing place too.

I know that many pros say I play to win and not just finish in the money. That may be true but I am not a pro and I finish in the money in MTT more often than not. That is my game as of now. As I progress I know I will change my game play and strategy. I have already moved up and am doing nicely.

I have a small list attatched to my monitor it reads:
Watch 4 staight
" " Flush
" " Slow play
DDAS
Don't Do Anything Stupid

As I said before I am still a novice but what I have learned and what I have done has worked very well for me so far and I thank everyone here at FTR for that.