Playing Agressive Vs Giving Away Chips

S

steveestewart

Enthusiast
Silver Level
Joined
Nov 8, 2009
Total posts
89
Chips
0
Ive been learning to play more aggressive lately and 'dominate' the table. I seem to be hitting a wall. Playing aggressive, I seem to win a lot of blinds (but on micro tables thats nothing), but when there's a big pot and I have a decent hand and go big, I seem to get a lot of donks that hit a big, RANDOM card and beat me with a full house or flush...

I never go all in with nothing thats not worth betting on, but how do balance, going big and winning 4 cent blinds with losing $1-2 going big? Can you do this or is this just poker??
 
B

BenLZ

Rock Star
Silver Level
Joined
Dec 3, 2009
Total posts
384
Chips
0
You don't have to dominate the table. At the micros, people are going to be hanging on to draws - I'd guess 'dominating' the tables would entail a loose-aggressive style. I've always gone tight aggressive, and I think that's how people should start out. Don't play many hands, but win the hands that you do.
 
Z

ZCorky

Enthusiast
Silver Level
Joined
Oct 1, 2009
Total posts
93
Chips
0
There are times that you should be trying to dominate a table, eg bigstack in tourney or late stages of a tourney. By the sounds of things you are playing on cash tables and there just isn't any real need to be dominating the table.

One lesson to learn is to not pay off drawing hands. Best way to help with this is to play with position.
 
slycbnew

slycbnew

Cardschat Elite
Silver Level
Joined
Aug 8, 2008
Total posts
2,876
Chips
0
If you want to develop good cash games skills, you're taking the right path - aggression is good, passive is bad.

However, there is good aggressive play and bad aggressive play. A couple of general ideas, without examples kinda hard to make suggestions:

1. Being agg is a heckuva lot easier in position than out of position.
2. If a passive fishy player calls you on two streets, they have something they like - don't continue betting if you're holding air or a bluff catcher.
3. If a passive fishy player raises you at any point in the hand, fold unless you have a very strong hand.
4. If another agg player plays back at you, try to figure out whether he's playing back at you because he's agg or because YOU are agg. Example - I'm btn, you're CO, and you've been open raising 30% of your hands and cbetting 100% of the flops you see. You open, I flat behind you. You bet the flop - I'm going to be looking for any excuse to raise here (I have position, you look like a lagtard), and holding 2 cards may be enough of an excuse for me. Worse for you, I'll do this if I hit the flop hard as well.
5. Identify players to pick on. Ideally they will call preflop a lot and fold the flop a lot, or they'll play back at you with air.
 
L

LizzyJ

Legend
Silver Level
Joined
Jan 3, 2009
Total posts
1,165
Chips
0
Instead of being hyper-aggro all the time, maybe you should change your game every once in a while. Go from nit to hyper and everything else in between, great way to confuse the table.
 
Arjonius

Arjonius

Legend
Silver Level
Joined
Jun 8, 2005
Total posts
3,167
Chips
0
Being aggression puts increased importance on pot management and opponent style recognition. Against loose opponents, you can play larger pots with relatively modest hands provided you're prepared to put up with the higher variance this involves. Against tight ones, those same cards are often easy folds, especially when you don't have position.
 
Poker Chips - History of Chips
Top