Why people say TAG is ideal and why LAG is better.

[Alucard]

I am 20 cents below what I began with that session, I had a huge cooler streak that is all.

Yeah I know mate. You play fine. But I thought no harm in trying to improve. Gl !

 

[Rational Madman]

Yeah I know mate. You play fine. But I thought no harm in trying to improve. Gl !

Am on 5.40 I counted my top ups totalled to around a 3.10 loss maximum, I've made minimum 30 cent profit which is 15 BB

edit: 5.64 and counting.

 

[Keith_MM]

Always with the vague 'we know what you can't conceive' BS instead of explaining why I'm wrong.

At least vinnie and playj don't pretend they know I'm wrong they just want my graphs. With you, even if i show positive graphs you will still hate saying it is 'short term upswing you will hit hard downswings' blablabla.

You are a hater in its purest form. I mean I would say bully but I can't prove that here because the moment you will go further and bully me Cc will censor it but I have no doubt you are a plain and simple bully-type sociopath.

It's fine by me that you are miserable and want to make others see how flawed and undeserving of respect or uniqueness they should be but sorry Mr. Stalin, I am the Tsar you couldn't kill.

This is just the typical wah wah wah of a spoilt brat who doesn't want to listen to good advice. You say i don't tell you where you are wrong , i've gone into great detail explaining why all the bullshit you spout is wrong in the past so that it doesn't cost other people money. If you don't want to listen to it that's your own choice , it just makes you look foolish when you keep ignoring good advice.

Vinnies first paragraph above sums up what we can see about the way you think about playing poker and all the leaks it entails. The last paragraph adresses the way you fix it , its the approach that Alucard has taken and you can see the results it has given him , or your can take vinnie's step brother's approach which will leave you permanently stuck in the poker basement.

 

[Rational Madman]

This is just the typical wah wah wah of a spoilt brat who doesn't want to listen to good advice. You say i don't tell you where you are wrong , i've gone into great detail explaining why all the bullshit you spout is wrong in the past so that it doesn't cost other people money. If you don't want to listen to it that's your own choice , it just makes you look foolish when you keep ignoring good advice.

Vinnies first paragraph above sums up what we can see about the way you think about playing poker and all the leaks it entails. The last paragraph adresses the way you fix it , its the approach that Alucard has taken and you can see the results it has given him , or your can take vinnie's step brother's approach which will leave you permanently stuck in the poker basement.

You are the brat who wishes he'd been spoilt who comes to my thread to make me enter the state of depression and self-loathing you languished day after day due to unloving family and coworkers.

I will not let your putrid negativity even slightly tarnish my beautiful smile. I am happy, I am confident and I profit and am only getting happier with my playstyle the more I play it. I am proud of who I am and proud of where I'm going to be.

You can scoff at me all you want, but I love me.

 

[Keith_MM]

lol , if you don't want to listen to advice that is up to you and no skin off my nose.
You can keep depositing and losing or grind play money if you want , I'll just make sure that you don't condemn other people to that fate by listening to the rubbish you spout.

 

[Rational Madman]

lol , if you don't want to listen to advice that is up to you and no skin off my nose.
You can keep depositing and losing or grind play money if you want , I'll just make sure that you don't condemn other people to that fate by listening to the rubbish you spout.

I profit real hard cash. I do it because of how much I practised without cash. Stop acting like you know a thing about me, you are just here to hate on me but the only one who looks pathetic is you with your badgering.

 

[pescaofish]

Mad man, your post is too long, unless you are trying to write a essay, this post is boring.

 

[Keith_MM]

lol

Stop acting like you know a thing about me,

from the guy who wrote

You are the brat who wishes he'd been spoilt who comes to my thread to make me enter the state of depression and self-loathing you languished day after day due to unloving family and coworkers.

I guess that sub 6$ bankroll proves you are a winning poker player after all .....

 

[Rational Madman]

Mad man, your post is too long, unless you are trying to write a essay, this post is boring.

Maybe I should post one sentence responses like you to get in freeroll club then right? Not actually contribute in return for the privilege with real original content.

You're a scavenger on the FC, don't mock me for choosing to be otherwise.

 

[Rational Madman]

lol


from the guy who wrote


I guess that sub 6$ bankroll proves you are a winning poker player after all .....

that was my stack not my bankroll

 

[AlexTheOwl]

There is no shame in having a small bankroll.

There is no shame in being a losing player.

It is shameful to mislead people (except in the game itself, where bluffing and keeping fishes in the game is part of the play). But Madman believes he is sharing great wisdom.

 

[ph_il]

I profit real hard cash. I do it because of how much I practised without cash.

Post your play money graphs.

How many play money BB/100 before you decided you were good enough to transition to a real money cash game pro?

 

[frazzle1991]

this was interesting, why was this guy banned? if anyone knows.

 

[vinnie]

this was interesting, why was this guy banned? if anyone knows.

The remaining posts don't give a full impression of what this guy was all about. A lot of his abusive, misanthropic, misogynous, and other paranoid or creepy ranting was deleted. His advice was almost always bad. It sounds good on the surface, but he didn't understand what he was recommending and couldn't turn it into a profitable play style.

Yeah, there are benefits to playing loose. But, he was pushing 40-60% VPIP and suggesting that it was profitable. Yeah, he could show a profit in some play money games, but he couldn't beat real cash tables or tournaments.

 

[frazzle1991]

The remaining posts don't give a full impression of what this guy was all about. A lot of his abusive, misanthropic, misogynous, and other paranoid or creepy ranting was deleted. His advice was almost always bad. It sounds good on the surface, but he didn't understand what he was recommending and couldn't turn it into a profitable play style.

Yeah, there are benefits to playing loose. But, he was pushing 40-60% VPIP and suggesting that it was profitable. Yeah, he could show a profit in some play money games, but he couldn't beat real cash tables or tournaments.

i see lol , thank you for your clarity, much appreciated. i try to listen to all personally and then develop my own way of doing things. im still yet to understand alot about poker.

 

[Trillian]

Loosening is not bad per se, when you have developed the needed postflop skills but there is a good reason, why it is recommended to start with TAG.

 

[Sorin Iliescu]

Why don't you wait until lyou are playing profitable real money poker before you try and tell other people how to play.

made my day
there is not a single or two styles of play; the more you balance, the more profitable you will be

 

[Gorblimey]

I'm building slowly is all.

Or leaking quickly.

 

[eggtart]

TAG play is great so you play good to premium hands and have fewer tough decisions. Its less volatile.
LAG play is better due to the fact you do not need good cards to pickup pots, bluff, with position.
Both have its up and down

 

[Peppinotom]

You have to fight against the odds and common knowledge.50% are average, better be above them. just remember a year ago and where you are playing. Is there a lot of people in your footsteps? remember!! you acted once before just like this, trusting in "you have to bet (all-in)" to make your card come hahahaha (it's just a part of the game):elefant:

 

[Jane Franklin]

Being LAG is more profitable, but depends on the table. And it should be smart. The TAG is just normal. Before you re getting LAG, you should ideally play in TAG style.

 

[frazzle1991]

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.

wish i re read this when i just came back. still very good info and has merit to it.

 

[BigCountryAA]

Ideally you will change how you play based on the players at your table. Don't put yourself in a corner by playing one way. If you are on a loose table...snug it up. Tight table? Loosen it up.

 

[perrypip]

The biggest losers are LAG players. The biggest winners are LAG players too but beginners should know the biggest losers are LAG players and not become one of them.

It is recommended that beginners start out with a TAG strategy. Tighter ranges won't get you into as many difficult postflop situations. As your skills improve and you play tight ranges profitably then you can try adding more hands to your ranges. Start a little at a time in the later positions first. Track your stats. See which hands in which specific positions are making you money and which are not and stick with hands that make you money.

Bot if you can't play profitably as a TAG you probably will lose even more as a LAG, because you'll be adding hands to your game that are more difficult to play.

 

[Hanosch]

thinking any of those is better seems weird. It s so situational. I ve been ahead qo hard in tournaments i pushed like any two and started to grow just by taking böinds more often than not and either winning all ins or justdoubling up small stacks. That was the right thing to do than. It s not a basic strategy you can recommend though.