Strategy against a TAG

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Jreece18

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What is the best way to deal with tight aggressive players? It's a huge problem of mine and I don't seem to find any articles on it. I usually try my best to avoid them, however in MTT's, one usually comes up and it's at a point where I can't afford to dodge them when they start betting and I have a decent hand.
 
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RodrigoCL

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Are you sure you mean TAG players? A TAG player will usually be aggressive with strong hands. They are somewhat easy to read because of this. If they keep betting after the flop is because they do have a hand, so that facilitates your decisions post flop. In comparison, a LAG player is very difficult to read, as they are very active in many hands and are aggressive even if they missed the flop completely.

With TAG players I will only get involved if I have a decent holding and preferably if I have position over them. You can assume they will come up with a big hand most of the time, so that should make your decisions easier.
 
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WiZZiM

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attack them on literally any low flops. also c-bet wide vs them as they will either play back or fold and won't call that much.

Also, in generally since they are tight preflop, we don't have to do much to exploit them apart from raise them as often as possible preflop...
 
Sil3ntness

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attack them on literally any low flops. also c-bet wide vs them as they will either play back or fold and won't call that much.

Also, in generally since they are tight preflop, we don't have to do much to exploit them apart from raise them as often as possible preflop...

Unless they have monster pocket pairs. If they're a TAG calling station that are married to their overpairs you better have a set, two pair or at least a huge combo draw to stack them.

Hell even at 100 & 200 NL cash cames I've seen regs that just can't fold their AA post flop.
 
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WiZZiM

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we're not really looking to stack them, we're looking to pick away at them in a ton of smaller pots. but of course if we happen to hit a hand, and they are continuing past the flop, it's very likely we're going to get paid well/stack them as their ranges are in general really strong. but for the most part, we want to win all the small pots they let us win.
 
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CHILOWWW

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I think the best way of facing a player like this in the MTT, if you have a strong hand or play dencente is not to be equally aggressive when playing wing intimadados good cards.
 
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tfree93

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Wizzim- so against TAG players the best strategy is to play as many small pots as you can? Ok, depending on the stage of the tournament say nearing the bubble or on the final table, does their hands normally tighten even further? If so would you ever recommend pushing all in against them to steal blinds/ re-raising or will they find it hard to walk away against a premium hand pre-flop?
 
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bbiase

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I don't agree with most of the commentaries regarding TAGs. TAGs are usually selective about starting hands, but it's a misconcept that you can just bluff them all the way. I reserve that to when I'm in position on wet boards. The good TAGs can make as much of a good read as a LAG, and if they have a good read on you, they'll know that you don't want to be check raised by them, and they can use that image. I think a TAG in position is much more scary than a LAG guy.

I usually do a lot of light 3-bet and check behind a lot on the River when I have showdown value. LAGs river bets aren't that scary to me.

Neverplay out of position against a TAG. They are the scariest.
 
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WiZZiM

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I don't agree with most of the commentaries regarding TAGs. TAGs are usually selective about starting hands, but it's a misconcept that you can just bluff them all the way. I reserve that to when I'm in position on wet boards. The good TAGs can make as much of a good read as a LAG, and if they have a good read on you, they'll know that you don't want to be check raised by them, and they can use that image. I think a TAG in position is much more scary than a LAG guy.

I usually do a lot of light 3-bet and check behind a lot on the River when I have showdown value. LAGs river bets aren't that scary to me.

Neverplay out of position against a TAG. They are the scariest.

i should have worded it better, but since this is a general type thread, i answered pretty generally/quickly.

I'm talking about attacking them preflop more than postflop, but we can reserve moves vs TAGs postflop on boards that do not hit their range.

regarding good TAGs that is the same for good anybody, but this thread has made no reference to it being a good TAG or a bad TAG, so it's just playing vs a Tight aggressive style player, just a random. Even though most TAGs are kind of on the better side, they also are on the nitty side of things, and are able to fold hands and make laydowns postflop, which is why bluffing on low boards is better, even though I worded it badly, we're obviously not attacking them on every single pot postflop since getting post with a TAG isn't really ideal.

But it still stands to reason that attacking/bluffing them preflop is a great way to pick up chips, we simply won't stack them much postflop so it also stands to reason that we need to take alot of the smaller pots away from them preflop and also attack them sporadically on boards that do not hit their range much.

hopefully that clears it up, if you still disagree then lets get into a discussion about why.. and what is the best/general way to make money from these players.
 
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WiZZiM

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Wizzim- so against TAG players the best strategy is to play as many small pots as you can? Ok, depending on the stage of the tournament say nearing the bubble or on the final table, does their hands normally tighten even further? If so would you ever recommend pushing all in against them to steal blinds/ re-raising or will they find it hard to walk away against a premium hand pre-flop?

it might not be the best strategy, there really is no such thing since it's such a general topic, and there are differing types of TAG style players out there, some of which are horribly bad and overvalue a lot of different hands, some of which are really good and tough to play vs.

in general theory though, they should be tighter preflop to shoves on the bubble, but vs a good TAG, he will know you are shoving wide, and thus call much wider as well. so it really depends. Vs a nitty bad TAG, then you can shove very wide on them as they simply won't call enough to make shoving really wide unprofitable for you.
 
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