Tight Play vs. Loose Play

Something I have been wondering about is how do you define Loose play vs. Tight play.

Often, people will note in their recounts / hand histories that the player they were up against was, or describe themselves, as loose or tight. In general terms, I think understand what this means. But, loose/tight seems to be a fairly subjective concept. Obviously, there could be degrees of loose/tight. But, how do you define it? Is there a magic number (VP$IP, %flops, etc..) or specific hands / range that differentiate loose and aggressive?

In looking at hand charts, and what is described as loose / tight, I would say that the vast majority of players (at least at the micros / low $$ tourneys) are loose, ultra loose, or super ultra loose. Does the definition change with the stakes, maybe?

Just curious on what others think about this.

The definition is completely subjective to the stakes you are at.
Lower stake games tend to draw more "loose" players. And the higher the stakes, generally play with "tighter" image.

Typically a person’s tight or loose image comes from the VPIP%. Here's some advice from HEM to help you understand a common bench mark.

these are results from 1790 players with at least 5K hands in the database. For each stat I have grouped results into 5 equal ranges and then taken the median bb/100. Often it is more meaningful to look at combinations of stats but this should give you a general guide.




VPIP: ..............Median bb/100
< 18.3 .....................2.18


18.3 to 20.2 ............ 3.46


20.2 to 21.9 .............3.04


21.9 to 25.3 .............3.72


25.3 + ......................-2.76



Note, it looks as though from this that a player with a VPIP of 27 is definitely going to be a losing player but please note that it is the upper half of that 5th group that accounts for most of the losses. Basically, this shows that any reasonably standard VPIP is profitable, low VPIP’s less so and the players with the high VPIP’s are the ones that feed the poker economy. Also note that very few of the high VPIP players ever make it to 5000 hands so the amount lost by high VPIP players is even much more pronounced than this chart shows. In fact, if you filter for all players with a VPIP higher than 50 you will probably find that the combined bb/100 for all these players is around -40bb/100!

Hope that helps you.

I think you are right when you say it's subjective , I've been described as tighter that a frogs ass , tight/passive and a calling station . I think of myself as tight/agg
without the tracker I think everyone see's you different , depending on the interaction they've had with you . also think most of us do not see ourselves the same as everyone else see's us
IMO just define it in your own way . unless you've played alot with the person it's just a general definition . JMO

im a tight player too but i dont consider myself a calling station. when i play generally im betting (unless its a trap). my stats on ultimate aren't the best but i've seen 6,731 flops out of 20,241 hands thats 29%, buti've won 48% of the hands ive played.