Ultra Aggressive Poker Style

Posted on 4/11/2022 admin

A simple tight/aggressive and positionally aware style of poker is the best way for somebody who is new to the game or currently struggling at these stakes to start having success. Develop Your Own Style of Play The last thing that I want to note about these HUD stats is that it is important for you to develop your own style of play. Stay aggressive. Aggression is good in poker. It describes a style that involves frequent bets and raises, and calling rarely, in order to influence the game in your favour. Almost all successful poker professionals play aggressively. To play good poker you have to be able to play aggressively, as highlighted in the article on the importance of aggression. Therefore as you can expect, the best playing style is going to be a toss-up between playing Tight-Aggressive or Loose-Aggressive. Playing aggressively is always better than playing passively, no question about it. This style is often employed by players who are new to the game, and is an expensive way to find out that this style is extremely bad poker. Loose-Aggressive: This player plays a lot of starting hands and plays them very aggressively – especially while the bets are small. While not all hands played are profitable, this type of player will. Poker pro Dario Minieri is known far and wide as a hyper-aggressive player, but he doesn’t seem himself that way. The Italian bracelet winner from 2008 went on a downswing last year, prompting.

What is LAG poker?

Perhaps LAG is one of those words we have seen floating around the poker forums. But what does it really mean?

LAG in poker stands for “loose aggressive” and describes a poker playing style.

The average LAG will have a VPIP of above 20% and a PFR of above 25%. When The VPIP starts getting above 30% and the PFR above 35% then it might be more common to refer to such a player as a “maniac”.

Is LAG a decent poker style?

The answer to this question really depends. LAG poker can potentially be the best style, but not always.

It’s not a big secret, but the majority of winning online players are TAGs (tight-aggressive). TAGs play a much tighter more conservative game. It is easier to master and overall entails a lower amount of variance.

However LAG style has the potential to make much more money in certain situations. The downside is that LAG requires more skill and is a higher variance strategy.
Many professional poker players have adopted this style, like Tom Dwan for instance - Well known in the poker world for his LAG approach.

Types of LAGs

It’s not necessarily true that all LAGs play the same type of game. There are typically good LAGs and bad LAGs.

The bad LAGs play a loose aggressive style but have problems finding the fold button when they are clearly beat.
The good LAGs play loose aggressive but are capable of making big laydowns when they are clearly behind.

Depending on which of the two we face, we frequently need to make adjustments to our strategy.

Play the Player

The idea of adjusting to our opponents should tell us something. The best style for us to have in any given situation is a style that is selected in response to our opponents’ tendencies.

So it’s usually not correct for us to identify with and stick to any one given style. If a player says something along the lines of “I’m a LAG” or “I’m a TAG”, then ironically he is likely not thinking about the game on the best possible level. We want to be poker chameleons, ever ready to adapt to our surroundings.

If a player insisted on always playing a LAG style, he would do very well against certain opponents but then run into difficulty against other types of player.

A good LAG plays loose-aggressive poker because his opponents have a tendency to play too tight and too face-up in certain spots. For example, the average TAG will have a tendency to always play aggressively with his premium holdings and never slowplay. So when he starts taking passive actions such as checking, it’s possible for a good LAG to deduce he is weak and start playing aggressively.

When LAG is Not Good

Let’s think of two examples where a good LAG would have to adjust to a different style as a result of his opponents tendencies.

The first scenario is when facing a calling station.

LAGs can easily lose money in this scenario since they will bluff overly aggressively only to watch in dismay as their calling station opponent hero-calls them down with an underpair to the board. So what should a good LAG do in this example? He should tighten up his ranges and value-bet relentlessly. He still might be going reasonably wide for value as a result of villain’s tendencies, but the idea is that he might look a little closer to a loose TAG as opposed to a LAG.

The second scenario is playing an aggressive but bad LAG, who cannot fold to aggression.

The typical LAG strategy of bluffing in good spots is not going to help that much here either, because villain is not folding. We could naturally follow a similar strategy to before and use a tight-aggressive approach: this would work reasonably well.

However it’s worth noting that there is now an additional component to this player’s strategy which we can also exploit. He is overly aggressive and will attack perceived weakness with aggression. The way we can exploit this is by slowplaying: appearing weak when we are actually strong. So against this particular opponent a tight-passive approach may work extremely well.

It’s interesting that passive play for the most part, is discouraged. However as an exploitative response to our opponents’ aggression, passivity can be an extremely potent weapon in our arsenal.

Decent LAG – Look for Weakness

If we could name a fundamental difference in terms of the mindset of a TAG compared to the mindset of a LAG, perhaps it would be the following.

TAGs looks at the strength of their hand

LAGs care less about the strength of their hand and more about the strength of their opponent’s hand.

This is just a rough approximation however, and we don’t want to do discredit to the TAG style in any way. There are many strong and competent TAG players who think deeply about their opponents’ ranges and are capable of making exploitative adjustments. But if we approximate the average difference we might say that TAG style is a little bit more about making hands while LAG style is a little bit more about bluffing.

Ultra Aggressive Poker Style Smoking

One of the most important skills a good LAG is the ability to spot when his opponent is not overly strong and may be willing to give up on the pot without too much of a fight.

To give a couple of examples -

1) Any time a player skips his cbet

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The truth is that the majority of players do not give enough thought regarding protecting their checking ranges. What this essentially means is that as soon as a player decides to skip his cbet on any street, in-position or out-of-position, he likely has a range that contains many more weak hands than premiums.

LAG players are always looking for spots like this to exploit weak and capped ranges.

2) Any time a player checks twice

A good LAG knows that it is extremely rare for a player to check twice with a strong holding. This means that a good LAG will be bluffing a lot with delayed cbets, and also river bluffs when villain has checked across two consecutive streets.

Should I Try LAG Style?

This is probably a function of our level of experience. It’s recommended that new players follow a tight-aggressive approach. The game is easier to play when we start out with a tighter range. We will have a stronger hand postflop more frequently.

Some poker schools will disagree though and say that it is better to jump right in at the deep end. Sure, LAG poker is tougher and involves more variance, but we will learn the game and hand reading a hell of a lot faster too.

So ultimately, we have to make a choice regarding what type of poker style we would like to pursue. But it’s also important not to identify too strongly with any particular style, since the best players have no real default style at all. They simply look for the exploitative style with the highest expectation based on their opponents.

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How To Be Selectively Aggressive
Any player with half a brain knows that aggressive poker is winning poker. But there are a few players – we’ll call them aggro-donks – that take this fact too far. These aggro-donks aggress in every situation. They usually build a decent stack early and then lose it all when another player traps them.

The best players are able to choose the right spots to show aggression. Here’s a quick overview of some good situations to aggress.

Good Opponents for Aggression
The best opponents to target are tight opponents. Tight opponents tend to fold rather than get involved with someone showing strength. Tight-aggressive opponents may start playing back at you if you take it too far, but weak/tight opponents will let you steamroll them all day long.

Keep putting pressure on your opponents as long as they keep cracking. As the saying goes, “Ball ‘til you fall.”

Good Flops for Aggression
The best flops for continuation bets or check/raises are dry flops. Take, for example, a flop like J47 rainbow. It’s very difficult for your opponent to have a good hand on this flop. Two pair is extremely unlikely and hands like JT or QJ aren’t going to be too happy about their top pair.

The only solid hands you could be facing are JJ+, KJs, AJ, 44 and 77. When your opponent bets, he’s representing one of those hands and that’s a very small part of his range. It’s a good time to attack and take down the pot. Be careful if you’re called though. Just because it’s unlikely your opponent has a hand doesn’t mean that he’ll never have a hand.

Good Turns for Aggression
There was a time when a continuation bet was like printing money. You’d only get a caller if your opponent had a legitimate hand. Otherwise, he’d fold and your bankroll would grow.
These days continuation bets are so common that players will float with all kinds of draws, pairs, over cards or even under pairs. That means you’ll have to continue your aggression on the turn if you want to get your opponents to lay it down.

Good turn cards are any card that’s an over card to the flop and doesn’t complete any draws. Take our J47 flop for example. Let’s say you bet the flop and get called. The turn is a King. That’s a good card to double barrel. If your opponent had a Jack, he’s not going to like his hand quite as much when the King comes down.

Aggression in General
The best times to be aggressive are when your opponents are likely to be weak. That doesn’t mean that your opponent is acting weak. An opponent acting weak could be trapping. It means that the board is unlikely to give your opponents range a strong hand.

By picking the right time to become aggressive, you’ll become a more difficult opponent and increase your overall win rate.