R
Rational Madman
Legend
Platinum Level
Why TAG is considered optimal
The stereotypical fish are either loose-passive or tight-passive rocks. The 'donkey' form of a fish incorporates a lot of irrational loose-aggressive poker into their playstyle rather than the typical fish who just makes dumb calls and chases bad odd hands to the river.
Against LP, TAG is undeniably optimal but very few players in modern era of online poker are loose-passive. They now come in the form of the too-safe TP style or the donkey LAG style. The loose-passive styled fish do exist but they are certainly not the majority which means TAG shouldn't be used to counter them.
In another thread I made, https://www.cardschat.com/forum/learning-poker-57/rock-paper-chips-scissors-i-mean-347891/, I explain which style at its core counters others.
In short the formula is this:
If the passivity of the styles is equal, the looser player will profit as they can easier read and bluff the other within their shared betting range.
If the hand-range (looseness vs tightness) of the styles is equal, neither style counters the other but you will find the AG leaning player dominates because they control the pot size of any win or loss.
If the passivity is opposite, the tighter player wins because the looser one will enable them to bait them again and again and not be tightening in response.
Why LAG is superior overall
I think there is no dispute that unless your opponent is doing the raising for you, you want to be aggressive rather than passive in poker.
The idea that Agg is better than Pass alignment stems from the core concept in poker that in order to afford losing money on misses, coolers, folding and bad beats you need to win it back on your good hands or good bluffs. If you play regularly passive, you are leaving the quantity of chips won and lost in the hands of the enemy, this in turn randomizes your profit vs loss margin rather than evening it out in the way that you controlling the pot amount per win and loss via aggression does. Ignoring that, unless you are against a very loose-passive player, aggression helps to get tells.
So why do I believe that a playstyle that incorporates more loose-aggressiong than tight aggression ends up being what the best poker players should aim for? You can argue against me saying that when pros go against each other they all adopt fundamentally TAG playstyles but this is because loosening up doesn't help at all at the top level of poker since your opponents simply stay tight but merely open up the range they will call you with or raise you with. When you play below the pro level, raises mean a lot less and so does checking ironically. In other words to even get tells from other players you very often need to bet a little here and there to gauge the real strength of their hands. Nothing kills a TAG player harder than checking to the river where they catch a twopair and overbet, then call a shove and realizing their opponent flopped a flush. The LAG player who is highly skilled does NOT bet a lot regularly, and they DO NOT ENTER EVERY SINGLE HAND but they definitely enter hands TAGs wouldn't and raise with zero increase in hand strength from late position in order to make tighter players fold or reveal their hand strength as well as softening up the meaning of their raises.
See, the biggest advantage LAG players have over TAG ones is that while both players are using aggression to get tells and to make others either fold or pay them off, the LAG player also uses betting to reduce the amount of 'tell leakage' they give when raising. This allows the to cooler-hand a player much smoother than TAG players ever can. In other words, when the TAG player has a fullhouse to your straight or twopair to your top pair, it's far less likely that your brain wouldn't process that as a likely outcome as you engage them at the river. On the other hand, with the LAG player, you know they will reraise a bet from you unless it's a huge one and you also know they will just call your bet if it's small and they have a weak hand, in other words you get forced against a LAG player to become a semibluffer with strong hands no matter what as you are in the dark of the severity of strength of their hand even at the point of being reraise do a huge bet when you have a straight to their fullhouse, you will likely call thinking they have three of a kind and have underestimated you.
It is very, very essential to understand the difference between a loose fish / donkey and a LAG shark. The LAG shark folds in many situations where the loose fish does not. The LAG shark is not being loose to prove his manhood or her bravery, they are also not being loose for a thrill; they are being loose in order to maximise their profit from being on the upper end of cooler hands and bad beats as TAG players make it far too obvious how strong their hand is due to how rarely they engage in medium-sized bets.
Also LAG players tend to bring out the LAG in other players at times and will be bluffed against and able to make hero calls that TAG players will find much less often they are able to do because people tend to only engage them with good hands.
The stereotypical fish are either loose-passive or tight-passive rocks. The 'donkey' form of a fish incorporates a lot of irrational loose-aggressive poker into their playstyle rather than the typical fish who just makes dumb calls and chases bad odd hands to the river.
Against LP, TAG is undeniably optimal but very few players in modern era of online poker are loose-passive. They now come in the form of the too-safe TP style or the donkey LAG style. The loose-passive styled fish do exist but they are certainly not the majority which means TAG shouldn't be used to counter them.
In another thread I made, https://www.cardschat.com/forum/learning-poker-57/rock-paper-chips-scissors-i-mean-347891/, I explain which style at its core counters others.
In short the formula is this:
If the passivity of the styles is equal, the looser player will profit as they can easier read and bluff the other within their shared betting range.
If the hand-range (looseness vs tightness) of the styles is equal, neither style counters the other but you will find the AG leaning player dominates because they control the pot size of any win or loss.
If the passivity is opposite, the tighter player wins because the looser one will enable them to bait them again and again and not be tightening in response.
Why LAG is superior overall
I think there is no dispute that unless your opponent is doing the raising for you, you want to be aggressive rather than passive in poker.
The idea that Agg is better than Pass alignment stems from the core concept in poker that in order to afford losing money on misses, coolers, folding and bad beats you need to win it back on your good hands or good bluffs. If you play regularly passive, you are leaving the quantity of chips won and lost in the hands of the enemy, this in turn randomizes your profit vs loss margin rather than evening it out in the way that you controlling the pot amount per win and loss via aggression does. Ignoring that, unless you are against a very loose-passive player, aggression helps to get tells.
So why do I believe that a playstyle that incorporates more loose-aggressiong than tight aggression ends up being what the best poker players should aim for? You can argue against me saying that when pros go against each other they all adopt fundamentally TAG playstyles but this is because loosening up doesn't help at all at the top level of poker since your opponents simply stay tight but merely open up the range they will call you with or raise you with. When you play below the pro level, raises mean a lot less and so does checking ironically. In other words to even get tells from other players you very often need to bet a little here and there to gauge the real strength of their hands. Nothing kills a TAG player harder than checking to the river where they catch a twopair and overbet, then call a shove and realizing their opponent flopped a flush. The LAG player who is highly skilled does NOT bet a lot regularly, and they DO NOT ENTER EVERY SINGLE HAND but they definitely enter hands TAGs wouldn't and raise with zero increase in hand strength from late position in order to make tighter players fold or reveal their hand strength as well as softening up the meaning of their raises.
See, the biggest advantage LAG players have over TAG ones is that while both players are using aggression to get tells and to make others either fold or pay them off, the LAG player also uses betting to reduce the amount of 'tell leakage' they give when raising. This allows the to cooler-hand a player much smoother than TAG players ever can. In other words, when the TAG player has a fullhouse to your straight or twopair to your top pair, it's far less likely that your brain wouldn't process that as a likely outcome as you engage them at the river. On the other hand, with the LAG player, you know they will reraise a bet from you unless it's a huge one and you also know they will just call your bet if it's small and they have a weak hand, in other words you get forced against a LAG player to become a semibluffer with strong hands no matter what as you are in the dark of the severity of strength of their hand even at the point of being reraise do a huge bet when you have a straight to their fullhouse, you will likely call thinking they have three of a kind and have underestimated you.
It is very, very essential to understand the difference between a loose fish / donkey and a LAG shark. The LAG shark folds in many situations where the loose fish does not. The LAG shark is not being loose to prove his manhood or her bravery, they are also not being loose for a thrill; they are being loose in order to maximise their profit from being on the upper end of cooler hands and bad beats as TAG players make it far too obvious how strong their hand is due to how rarely they engage in medium-sized bets.
Also LAG players tend to bring out the LAG in other players at times and will be bluffed against and able to make hero calls that TAG players will find much less often they are able to do because people tend to only engage them with good hands.