Commonly Used In Acronym Format Throughout The Poker World, But What Do LAG and TAG Play Involve?

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 Selective Aggressive poker style is the most common among winning poker players. 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. 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”.

You will often see LAG and TAG used to describe poker strategy styles on forums and in articles throughout the poker world. These actually describe two of the most profitable playing styles: LAG = ‘Loose Aggressive’ and TAG = ‘Tight Aggressive’.

This article describes a system which enables you to put opponents into different categories of poker playing style based on their observed behavior. Once you do this it is easy to adjust your own play according to their style – to maximize your profits.

Planet Mark's Rec: If you are having trouble assessing opponents, why not let a poker tool do the hard work for you! Check out our Best Poker Tools section for more!

The starting point for assessing playing styles is to identify the two basic categories on which we rate players. The first scale describes the amount of hands played and goes from extremely loose (plays almost every hand) to extremely tight (premium hands only). The second concerns whether those hands are played with bets and raises, or with checks and calls. This goes from extremely passive (calls) to extremely aggressive (bets and raises). These can be made into a graph such as the following:

Next we can look at how a player with each of the styles identified in the graph might approach the game:

• Tight-Passive: This player only plays solid starting hands from good position, however they will rarely bet and raise without the stone-cold nuts – allowing observant opponents to get away cheaply. Tight-passive players are unlikely to be winners, though their losses will be small.
• Tight-Aggressive: This is the TAG Player from the introduction. Plays only solid starting hands and plays them positively and aggressively. An experienced Tight-Aggressive player is difficult to beat. This is one of the most profitable styles of poker.
• Loose-Passive: Playing too many hands and playing them by calling rather than raising is asking to have your money taken in poker. 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 often get paid-off on big hands – since they raise so often those aces are nicely disguised.

$16 Per Hour Within 4-Weeks With The SNG Planet Free Course: Sign-up for the $16 Per Hour SNG Blueprint today, I'll take you from novice / intermediate level to being able to crush 1-table tournaments for at least $16 and hour over 4 weekly e-mailed installments. Feedback for this course has been excellent - Find out more in our $16 Per Hour SNG Blueprint Preview Page now!

Finally we can look at how to adjust your own style to beat the playing styles of individual opponents.

• When playing a pot against a Tight-Passive opponent: It is difficult to win a big pot against this type of player. Instead you can easily pick up small pots with bets when they show weakness. When a tight-passive opponent bets and raises strongly you need to exit the hand – they are unlikely to do this without the nuts.
• When playing a pot against a Tight-Aggressive opponent: Here you need a strong hand to continue, calling bets is not advisable – as you are likely to be faced with an even bigger bet on the next betting round. These are the toughest opponents to play against – however their aggressive tendencies can be used to help you build a big pot when you have a monster hand.
• When playing a pot against a Loose-Passive opponent: Rarely bluff this player, they are likely to call with some very weak holdings. You make the majority of your profit against this player by value betting – that is to say when you have a hand you must extract the most profit possible against a loose-passive opponent.
• When playing a pot against a Loose-Aggressive Opponent: Never wait for the nuts against a LAG opponent – your chips will be slowly eaten away while you wait. Instead play solid hands from position and value bet with lesser holdings than you would against other players. Let the loose aggressive player drive the betting to build a big pot when you hit an unlikely nut hand.

$16 Per Hour Within 4-Weeks With The SNG Planet Free Course: Sign-up for the $16 Per Hour SNG Blueprint today, I'll take you from novice / intermediate level to being able to crush 1-table tournaments for at least $16 and hour over 4 weekly e-mailed installments. Feedback for this course has been excellent - Find out more in our $16 Per Hour SNG Blueprint Preview Page now!

Ultra Aggressive Poker Style Tobacco

Further Reading For Players Looking To Exploit The Weakest Games:

Ultra Aggressive Poker Style Damper

• 10 Best Beginners Poker Tournaments, Lists a diverse selection of poker tournaments which should be profitable for the thinking beginner.

• Knockout Bounty Tournaments, These place a 'bounty' on the head of every player who enters, which is awarded to whoever knocks them out. Not only are they entertaining - they attract many more recreational players than regular tournaments... again meaning bigger potential profit for thinking players!

• PLO and PLO8 Tournaments, Well, holdem is far from the only game, you would be surprised how many Omaha tournaments are now running - find out more in our Omaha tournaments guide.