Playing Tight-Aggressive Poker

Tight-aggressive poker is a poker playing style with low flop percentage and forceful betting. Tight poker play – a tight player folds when reasonable poker strategies advise to do that. Usually, you wait for the flop only if you have good or strong starting hands, or else you fold before the flop. For example, if you are dealt with pocket cards of 4h and 3c, a tight poker player will not wait for the flop but instead will fold his cards and wait for the next hand. In most cases, a tight player will similarly fold with trouble hands, for instance, a King and a Ten or an Ace and a Ten. Tight play is not just about pre-flop. In case, after the flop, the tight player realizes his chances of winning have decreased, he will most likely fold. Basically, a tight player in most cases plays the hand with good odds for him, otherwise, he folds.

Aggressive poker play – the aggressive poker player bets forcefully as he decides to play and can be recognized from his frequent betting, raising and re-raising. He is not really interested in checking or calling down his opponents and he is leading the betting as many times as he can.

Thus, a tight-aggressive player plays good hands or he is cautiously choosy about his played hands. Then again, when he makes up his mind to play a hand, he bets rather aggressively and plays to win.

Why Play Tight-Aggressive Poker

There are additional poker playing styles. The reverse of tight poker play is loose poker play. Players adopting the loose poker style will try to see as much flops as possible (acting similarly at the turn and the river) regardless if they have good or bad starting hands. Then again, the reverse of aggressive poker play is the passive poker play. Generally, the passive poker play follows the opponent’s lead throughout the betting rounds. He also prefers to call and to check. Consequently, in poker, a player can adopt tight-aggressive, tight-passive, loose-aggressive or loose-passive style. So, why should you adopt a tight-aggressive poker style?

Well, tight play is all about efficient use of your available chips, as you will not throw away your chips on bad hands and will not get fined for playing speculative hands. Tight playing tells you to play only when you have good hands, and fold with bad hands.

Then again, aggressive playing allows you to defend your good hands. Repeated betting and re-raising as well, mount up the cost of speculation. The more players drop out of the betting, the higher your odds of winning are.