Playing styles: how to find your style of poker

Every online poker player who plays for money has their own style of play. However, the multitude of styles can be reduced to just two: Tight and Aggressive. The following will describe the advantages and disadvantages of these styles.

Tight players play very cautiously and try to enter the pot with a strong hand. The advantages of this style are obvious:

When playing with strong hands, more often than not, you don’t have to make tough decisions on the flop and subsequent streets.

More often than not, you will intimidate your opponents with your play, as they will already know that you only enter the game with strong cards.

However, a very big disadvantage of this style is the predictability of your actions. By playing the table for a long time, your opponents get to know each other and notice that you only come in on strong cards and they will often not join the pot when you bet. Therefore, they will be wary of you and play with you infrequently.

Aggressive players, on the other hand, try to enter the game on a wide range of hands. When betting, most players won’t know the strength of the aggressive player. In doing so, the aggressive player immediately has several tricks for his betting: to knock opponents out of the pot, to try to imitate a strong hand (bluffing), or to already have a strong hand and try to maintain his aggressive style.

The main advantages of an aggressive player are considered to be:

• It’s hard to know what hand an aggressive player is entering the pot with.
• It is difficult to gauge the strength of the aggressor’s hand after the flop.
• It is always possible to knock other players out of the pot by using bluffs.

The main disadvantage of aggressive players is the uncertainty of position. You always have to play against strong hands, so you have to make the right decisions on the flop, turn and river.

If you ask the question: what is the best style for the game? There’s no clear answer. As a beginner, it is best to use a tight style that will avoid making hard decisions on the flop. Once you get the skill and experience in the game, you can use aggression against other players. But if you have already started playing poker for money, a combination of these styles is best, and constantly changing one to the other will allow you to confuse your opponents.