Tight or loose?

Is it good to be too tight? I play only the hands that merit an investment and depending on the position, but while I always belong to 5-10% of finalists never reached the end due to lack of chips. What do I do wrong? Should I play a greater range of hands? I consider that I make good profits with the premiums

Do you play tourneys? I do sit n go, so my advice is different, but similar. I know that sng and tourney have this in common. Play tight early, and looses up as blinds go up. Tight is right early. But, if you don't adjust, the blinds steal your stack. You have to steal others blinds and win showdowns.

darsenero98 said:

Is it good to be too tight? I play only the hands that merit an investment and depending on the position, but while I always belong to 5-10% of finalists never reached the end due to lack of chips. What do I do wrong? Should I play a greater range of hands? I consider that I make good profits with the premiums

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"It depends" It is impossible to tell you what to do without knowing precisely what you're doing in certain situations (and actually even more importantly, exactly "how you're thinking" in different situations). Poker is situational & we should be 'playing our opponents', not just our hands or 'our game' (as some like to suggest).

Tight or Loose... 'it depends'. Sometimes tight... sometimes loose.

Best way is to be tight/aggressive. Its not good to be too tight cuz many times you will get bluffed and loose players have more luck at the beginning but later they loose all chips and dont even make ITM

i tend to play a lil of both esp at my local casino-if you just play tight all the timeand you raise a lot of ppl will read your hand strength -playing to loose and you just get busted out of tourney rather fast,i think playing a lil of both makes you a lil less readable esp when you throw in a few well timed bluffs

It all depends on the position you have and how opponents play but playing with strong hands is the best. I remember reading an article that said that professionals play from 10% to 18% of the hands distributed including farols

I can't remember the last time I've seen a tight player win a tournament. Just usually doesn't happen. As the blinds get big and antes grow you don't have 3-4 orbits to wait for a "decent" hand. You have to open up your range some.

When you have a big stack playing tight will allow you to keep you stack intact. It is really good at the beginning of a tournament or once you have some chips. But premium hands are few and far between. Even worse, you finally get AA and everyone folds to you and you get the minimum after blinding down.

It takes a better hand to call a raise than make one. Bet more and you will see higher finishes.

Poker Orifice said:

"It depends" It is impossible to tell you what to do without knowing precisely what you're doing in certain situations (and actually even more importantly, exactly "how you're thinking" in different situations). Poker is situational & we should be 'playing our opponents', not just our hands or 'our game' (as some like to suggest).

Tight or Loose... 'it depends'. Sometimes tight... sometimes loose.

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Well said.

Is good to play with good hands only, but you need to find spots to bluff or take risk with mediocre hands in order to make it to the FT.

If you play mtt's its better to be tight agressive then loose, i advise playing loose only if its on bubble and you're a big stack at the table

Some people say that you should play tight when the table is loose and play loose when all the table play very tight.

Other line of thought is that you should start very tight while the blinds are small and while the tournament advance start to loose up until a maniac.

probable the reason for you don't be getting some profitable yet is because you are a beginner and makes a lot of mistakes, maybe is a downswing and you should be patience.

darsenero98 said:

Is it good to be too tight? I play only the hands that merit an investment and depending on the position, but while I always belong to 5-10% of finalists never reached the end due to lack of chips. What do I do wrong? Should I play a greater range of hands? I consider that I make good profits with the premiums

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You must be tight, it's the way that every player get sucess.
Maybe what you're doing wrong is that when you are in the first one hour of tournaments, blinds and ante don't cost so much.
When you get to middle game, or finals, usually players that are still playing very tight loose their money from blinds and ante. So at this point you should start the hard part of poker, that is, explore your opponents week spot. What do I mean by that?
Players that are so much agressive, usually can be taken by re-raises, and courage, you must go for it when you decide to go.
Players that are so much tight, you can steal so much money from them, they play on good hands, understand how they play when they do have this hand, when they don't, steal their blinds.
And it goes this way to several types of players, the important thing is to explore this to get money, so you will start getting to finals.
After all, remember to have fun!

I prefer to be a tight player because playing a very tight range of cards with strong hands will have more chances to win the hand ... of course I do that in the first phases of a tournament when we have enough chips and the BB are small .. We just have to have passion and expect strong hands

I prefer to be tight/agressive , but in some cases , I change my style depending on my opponents

I will be honest with you. When I started playing Poker, I was really tight. But after gaining some poker experience, I figured out how important position is. So play tight, but think about position. AT UTG is not oke, but dealer AT with nobody calling before you is possible. So think about this when you play

darsenero98 said:

Is it good to be too tight? I play only the hands that merit an investment and depending on the position, but while I always belong to 5-10% of finalists never reached the end due to lack of chips. What do I do wrong? Should I play a greater range of hands? I consider that I make good profits with the premiums

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If you're getting to 5-10% of the playing field then I say you are doing excellent. It all comes down to ROI-return on investment. If you're cashing freerolls then good for you. If you're playing buy-ins then you need to make sure you're making more then you spend. This can be tricky. I typically have a ROI on my live tournament play around 140%. Lack luster I know but I have the same problem of min cashing and not reaching the higher payouts. It sucks. I'm currently trying to play a bit more aggressive and chip up more. So far it hasn't worked.

There are players who, because of the aggression at the beginning, will get a good amount of chips. But then they come across a strong hand and lose everything. They are strong in the beginning, but with each stage of these players is less.

The shorter your stack is relative to the BIG BLIND (not necessarily to others), the looser you have to become in your RANGE.
^ This seems suicidal but comebacks only happen from shock-flops completing bad hands in a surprise draw that better hands won't see coming.


The LARGER your stack is relative to OTHER PEOPLE'S stacks (not necessarily the big blind), the tighter you should become in your RANGE (in my opinion) because while big stacks can profit from overbetting, I have come to find that nothing guarantees second place better than folding to the end once you're fed.

Stick to this idea and you will bubble much more often but in terms of getting to first place, that's a case of just being looser the more loose the heads up villain is.

"Villain" refers to player other than self (who is the "hero).

I'm not sure. Everybody is saying to play tight, but in the tournaments people with the biggest stack always are those who play very loose and aggressive. Calling or re-raising everything and going allin with 47s to win with AA or KK.

Being a tight player is very discouraging.

Everything is already invented in poker. Change your game and adapt to the changes of your opponents, play more aggressive and always try to read the opponent, do not rest until you achieve and you will get good results

You should mix your game. Consider your number of blinds, tourney phase, position and opponents styles and then you can choose wich style to play. eg: 100bbs - middle game - loose opponents - OOP -> Play more tight. But some light steals must be attempted sometimes.
Like the most annoying answer in poker world says: it depends!

What purpose ?

Have you stopped to think before you play? Have you set a goal? How to reach them? Being profitable sometimes is not always always winning first, if a person plays 50 tournaments, wins 1. And if you play 50 and rewards more than 75%, maybe your profit is higher, do not worry about making chips, Worry about winning the good hands, knowing the time to play, and extracting the maximum.

I think that you can be too tight in tournaments, if that's what you're playing. I've noticed from some of my games if I'm playing very tight and only winning a few hands I fall behind pretty far in the later parts of the games and at some point it just gets to hard to work your way back up to have a chance at winning. I'd say that the tight and looseness of the game has to be able to change by hand really, if your in UTG you obviously need to play tight but if you're OTB you need to play loose if no one else if making big raises. I'm still learning this balance but I'm sure you will to as you play. Good luck out there!

tight agrressive is the best imo. I will switch up styles though depending on players, tournament type, what stage the tournament is in.

I like your style of play, eventually you'll take the big money.