Question of the day: is loose/aggro the way to go?

How do you feel about loose/aggro Vs. tight/aggro? There are many advocates of loose/aggressive play, but my question is, are they winning despite playing loose/aggressive? could these players win more if they played tight/aggressive?

A couple years back I did a very non-scientific study using PLO. I played roughly 50,000 hands at 49/15 and compared my results with my normal play of 28/15.

I won using both styles, and I actually beat PLO25 & 50 for 4.10BB/100 (which would be a pretty good win rate) using the loose/aggro style. However, my win rate using the 28/15 approach was 5.7BB/100 at these same stakes. If I had started off playing loose/aggro (and never tried tight/aggro) i might advocate it as the way to play, since I won pretty handily.

So, the question is, do you win because of the loose/aggro style or despite it?

I know Alien Genius on this site is a very successful LAG, I don't think one is better than the other. I think TAG v. LAG is more of a question of the person playing and which one fits your personality/skills better. I also suspect you already know this

I think you would win the most with mixing both styles. Finding ones "own style" is pretty important I think, especially if you want to move up in stakes where your opponents get better and better..

Opponents will have an easier game if you just play this or that style "straight forward"..

I tend to play looser in last time, trying out that "small ball style". Sometimes youre a loose-passive callingstation, sometimes the aggro-fish Hard for everyone out there to put you on ANY hand!

I would say that I'm still searching for "my style". But "not sticking to one style alone" helped me already

mOO,

I'd call that more changing gears, and these 'switches' really won't impact your VPIP/PFR #'s much at all, they'll still reflect they type of player you are: loose or tight

sure, it can be seen as changing gears, too..

But I actually dont want to be seen as tight OR loose. I want my opponents to play the "guessing game" when I bet. They should not have that tight/loose-information about me, they shall guess, and be wrong

If you say 28/15 is tight and 49/15 is loose.. Then there is still a number between those two. And that would be which style !? Lets say 38.5/15 to find the exact middle.

You cannot just say "loose or tight, period" , since poker is a dynamic game thats based on incomplete informations.

If you tend to trust your tracker-data to 100%, I cannot imagine that you'll make as much correct decisions as possible.

ANother example: Your table is wild and loose.. everyone. So the "correct" strategy would be to play tight.

Now the other way, everyone plays like a rock. You should play loose, the opposite of what your opponents do.

You play 50k hands on tight table and 50k on loose table.
Now youre tight or loose overall?

Its depends very much on the table dynamic as to which style is the best to approach. There are tables online where it would be a pretty major mistake to play a TAG style.

Typically if I start a session I will play TAG until the situation allows me to start to open up my game more and more until eventually on occasion I am playing what appears to be maniac poker. Having a set game type or style is something that I don't necessarily agree with.

Then again I play nlhe full ring, so in essence I am a TAG at heart

I love this answer, but I guess I'm talking long-term, obviously you will need to shift your strategies depending on table dynamics. But, long-run (figure your PT stats)

It depends. It depends on the long run too. There's no best style of play. Just play to exploit your opponents, and since your opponent's are changing all the time, so should your style.

In my hold'em manager sessions, I've varied between 22/20 and 35/32.

I could see smart LAG being a good strategy in SNGs and MTTs. For ring games, however, LAG is really going to cut into your multi-tabling. It's just too time-consuming to be playing so many pots. That's reason enough for me not to bother with it. Sure, I could maybe increase my BB/100 by playing more aggressive, but I probably wouldn't be able to play many tables that way, and that would bring down my hourly earnings.

I agree with most of the consensus here. If you multi-table ring games, there's you really can't LAG successfully. At higher stakes (say 25NL up) you could LAG successfully with 1 or 2 tables. To play LAG well you need to know your opponents even better than with TAG game. You just can't do that with 6+ tables going.. 4 <b>maybe</b> if you have really good samples on everyone at the table.

As far as tournaments/SnG's go, sure you can be successful playing LAG. You're looking for a lower % win but more high finishes rather than having a higher win % with lower finishes playing TAG. And again, reads/stats on your opponents is very important to playing LAG.

No matter what approach you prefer (best of course if you can adapt), the most important I think is that you are a solid player.

And as far as tourneys go, I think the most successfull players switch between LAG/TAG several times during the road.

And Loose/passive works very well vs some players too. (the ones who bid crazy with nothing, and check or minbet win something)

depending on the blind structure and your chip stack you can play both LAG and TAG depending on your table image and certain starting hands and situations

switching is fine, I think we all understand that. I'm talking about long_term #s. If over 50,000 hands you are 24/18 you are tight aggro, it doesn't mean that for several hundred of those hands you didn't play loose/aggro.

What it does say is in general you are tight aggro. Some people have 200,000 hands where their final #s are 48/22. these are loose aggros. I could care less about session to session #s, Im speaking long-term.

I hope this clears up the original question.

It doesn't matter. Different styles suit different players. For many players, they will be more profitable playing LAG. For others, playing TAG is the way to go. There's no definite answer, which is why you see both strategies used frequently.

Uhh... what are you guys smoking? A few points I'd like to make:

1) A LAG style is more suited to ring games. When you play weaker hands, this increases your variance dramatically. In tournaments, you should generally avoid high variance plays (because the chips you could earn aren't as important as the chip you could lose [usually]). Tournament players are often worse as well, and playing weak hands is much more difficult when you are seeing a lot of showdowns. Hence why no one tells you to play a LAG style at 1c/2c NLHE.

2) I play with a VPIP of ~35 & my PFR is ~30, which some would consider LAGgy, and I play 6-7 tables of 6-max at a time.

3) Tournament LAG play when you're 30 big blinds deep is also much different from playing LAG in a ring game where you're 100-200 big blinds deep.

4) Stop ****ing caring about long term stats, especially preflop ones. There are no optimal stats, stop ****ing looking for them. There are only optimal stats for a certainly player type. Its easy to give optimal stats at say 1c/2c NLHE because you play all the same player types who call too much & bluff too much. So therefore a TAG game is going to be more successful, because you're exploiting your opponent's mistakes. But when you move up, you stop worrying about wether you're a 18/16 or a 80/50 because it changes every session. Don't tailor your strategy to get stats, tailor your strategy to exploit your opponents.

And you guys are SERIOUSLY looking at this from the wrong perspective. You should not be playing LAG just because "oh, it suits my style". You don't raise K6o just because its your style. You do so because you think it will exploit some leak a player has. You play to capitalize on player's mistakes, and if you have to raise 45% of your hands preflop to accomplish that, then you should be playing a LAG style.

And a 48/22 is not a LAG, they're just a loose-passive fish, unless there's some weird table dynamic going on (sitting on the left of a Dr. Spewy McManiac preflop that gives up a lot postflop, for example).

Uh...what C9 said.


Seriously people, stop looking for this magical "optimal stats".

There are no optimal overall stats.

LAG is not better than TAG in general.


Learn what you should pay attention to at a table. This will vary depending on a myriad of variables at each table you sit at. You should play whatever style will maximize your profit at the table you are at!

If this means you need to turn into 30/28 LAG then do it. If this means you need to turn into a 7/6 nit then do it. If you are sitting on the left of the guy I was yesterday who was a 100/2 spewtard that would stack off *any* single pair hand post flop, you turn into something like a 50/15. Etc...


Pay attention to your table and play however is best for that table.

I would like to see a definition of how to play well on a LAG basis. I definitely struggle to play well when I try what I think of as LAG. My TAG game is good, but not great. Slowly positive playing that way.

playing lag results in much more difficult situations, and marginal decisions. so simply imo u should be a better player to play lag.
and its also much more difficult if your multi tabling, u have to observe ur tables, opponents better if ur playing lag.

This ^^ +1. If you can't adapt to your opponents and exploit them, it doesn't matter what style you play.

My favorite type of thread, argumentative

Not to bring up the point again, but the original question isn't about session to session, or the ability to switch gears, or about some magical VPIP/PFR numbers.

What I was getting at is, certain players have a tendency to play looser than others (AGAIN, this doesn't mean all the time) but players do trend towards different styles over time. Much the same as your win rate; looking at it session to session it would be all over the place, but in the long-run it will tell you if you are winning or losing.

So, while Gus Hansen may nit it up at certain tables, he still trends towards loose/aggro. Where another superstar player would trend toward tight/aggressive in the long-run.

So the question remains: Do they win because of a looser style, or despite it? Could they win more by tightening up a bit?

they win because they can adjust. if you can't adjust it doesn't matter what your "base" or "normal" or "preferred" style is one iota.

Conversely, if you can adjust well. You can play whatever base style you want and be successful.

Exactly, It's the player who can read the table he is at an adjust accordingly who will bank th emost profit...Getting in generalizations about how to play will undoubtedly lead to streaky results as you play with different people. However, I do know quite a few players who are uncomfortable playing LAG, so maybe varying your play to that extent is easier said than done.

Learn what you should pay attention to at a table. This will vary depending on a myriad of variables at each table you sit at. You should play whatever style will maximize your profit at the table you are at!


Couldn't have said it better.

Stats are not gonna help you on the table. Nobody here, as much respect as I have for everyone here, is Gus Hansen. How often do you play with the same people? The pros mix it up all the time and know each other well. The only thing you have to go off of when youre at a table is how they're playing on that table. By the time you're known as a loose or tight player you've moved on to a whole new set of players. So, if I'm playing with a loose player who just got caught in 3 semi bluffs in a row, I know I can exploit him on that table. Improvise,adapt,and overcome on every table. If you don't switch up your play you're gonna have a tough time.

It depends on the limits that you play and the other players at the table.

At the lower limits play tight tight tight!

If you notice there are tight players after you try to steal their blinds cheap every round!

-Raymond