|
|
 Interesting Article On Playing Styles
Every poker player has his or her own playing style, whether they realize it or not, and each playing style can be more effective than the last depending on how you play it. Depending on what your type of play is, you may be a more or less successful poker player. In this article I plan on outlining the many different types of poker play, and how you can choose which the best one for you is. In this article, the term “style” will be referring to two different things; how many hands you play, how far you play those hands, and how much you bet or call on those hands. The formally known terms when referring to playing types are these:
Aggressive – Bet strong when in an average or better position. Raising and check-raising are the name of the game. Use high betting to push passive people out.
Passive – Usually just call the pot to stay in, even when certain hands are good. Will play “carefully,” and can usually be bought out by an aggressive player.
Strong – Indicates a player that’s experienced at their style of play.
Weak – Indicated a player that’s new/unsettled with their style of play.
Tight – Wait for the best cards, folds most average ones.
Loose – Pay to see the flop more often than they should. Play more cards than probability tells you to, and usually will take a gamble against the odds.
Now choosing and playing a strong style can be hard, and the decision should be well thought out depending on the types of games you play and who you play them with. You can play your style in varying degrees too, not always pushing hard towards a certain defined category. Provided, a good strategy is to change up your style throughout a game, depending on changes in players, blinds, position, and so on.
Tight/Aggressive
Most successful poker players recommend playing tight-aggressive. When playing aggressive, you are relying on your skill to read people’s weaknesses, to semi-bluff or bluff them out, and eventually push them on tilt out of frustration. With this style, you will only go in with good hands, and you will always try to make the most out of them through strong play. By only bringing the best hands to the flop and post-flop you are guaranteeing yourself more opportunities to create a great hand, and thus giving yourself more opportunities to make money. Keeping this style of play in poker games is highly effective and the reasons why should be fairly apparent. Be careful that you know how to read people and analyze your hand before playing really aggressive, because throwing your money away at a bad hand could cost a weak player all their money in one go.
Passive/Loose
On the contrary, playing loose-passive is usually the best way to lose money. Many beginners will deviate towards this type of play out of fear for loosing money yet the inexperience to choose the right cards to play with. Playing loose-passive is something you should avoid, as its tendency to call into and then drop out of a lot of pots will destroy your chances of staying alive. The key is to try to keep away from this type of play consciously, especially when you feel yourself going on tilt after some bad hands.
Tight/Passive
Players who are tight-passive are the most conservative players, sometimes called “rocks,” because they are involved in the least amount of pots and will bet away the least amount of money on their cards. This style of play is also considered to be relatively weak, in that you will be sucked under by blinds and won’t open yourself to opportunities to win money. Occasionally early on during tournaments players will use this style to wait for a few others to drop out before switching to more aggressive play, but monitoring the blind size and other players chip amounts is essential to using this technique effectively. If you don’t, you will find yourself with not more to work with when switching back to your aggressive play.
Finishing Thoughts
Choosing the right type of play on a per-game basis is an essential skill to master. A game with mostly passive and tight players is considered an “easy table” because you can outplay that table with an aggressive style. To illustrate, when sitting at a table of passive and/or tight players, you can push them out of a pot you may have lost with strategic betting rather easily. On the contrary though, when playing with many aggressive players you will want to match their style but make sure you play the strongest at the table. In this case you may need use other poker knowledge, such as tells, to bail you out of tough pots. So when playing to gain money, choosing the table of tight-passive players should always win you more.
Republished with permission from: www.holdem-strategy.net
|
Reply With Quote