Switching Gears

Recently I've had some lingering thoughts about the idea of switching gears so I figured I'd get people's input. This is more of a conceptual question, btw. Often times when we talk about playing styles in tourneys, we talk about switching gears. The way I've generally thought about switching gears is to alter my playing style depending on the situation I am presented at the table.

In the past few tourneys I've played, I found myself switching gears (or at least trying to) but I noticed that I tend to think of these gears as a set style of play (e.g., loose-aggressive, tight-aggressive). That is, I've noticed I have a tendency to categorize the "gears" as a type of play rather than thinking of these plays along the lines of a continuum (instead of an abrupt switch to a specific type of play, a gradual transition to another form of play). I'm not sure if this has hurt my play or not, but I'm wondering how other people conceptualize this?

I hope I'm making some sense here - in my head I know what I'm talking about but I can't seem to put it in words very effectively/clearly.

No thoughts at all? I'm still interested in hearing people's opinions so I'm going to give this a bump.

Well, I personally play loose for the first hour and then gradually tighten up. So you could categorize that as switching gears- 1st hour I play very fast- more willing to call raises with rags, bluffing, check-raising with draws, check-raising all-in with nothing, etc. 2nd hour- tighten up more, play far fewer hands. 4th and 5th hours- all-in, or if big stack, put opponent all-in, or fold, no limping at all.

All this is from my experience at bodog where I have an excellent ROI at the $10-$100 tourneys, especially their $44 tourneys. Now if I could only stop playing cash games and the 270 Players Choice, lol.

Im a beginner at poker so Im not sure if my imput will help. Anyway I think your pretty much right in what your saying in that switching gears is your aggresion factor. I think its important to know when and how long to ramp up the aggresion and when to wait.

I play 18 man sngs so tend to ramp up the aggresion from 7 - 4 players left if I can to take advantage of bubble play. At the moment I am reading zen poker and the author talks about being able to wait for the cards and not getting bored or frustrated and just playing for the sake of it. So learning how to stay in "first gear" can be just as valuble as moving up a gear, the same as learning to switch down gears is important too.

I think an important thing to think about is that switching gears is sometimes pretty organic in that it just can happen naturally and happens more without you realising with the more experience you get.