Adjusting Your Play - The Loose Game
In the first part of this article I touched upon the adjustments that are required in your game to remain competitive in a Tight game. In this part of the article I am going to run though the adjustments needed to be competitive in a Loose game.
The loose game
I feel that it is easier to adjust to a loose game, as you find a lot of in experienced, poor players adopt this style. They play far too many hands and they also take these hands too far past the point at which they should have been folded. Meaning that these sorts of players are just constantly throwing money away.
The opponents you will come up against on loose tables at the minute are very easily and simply beat, all you need to do is wait for a Premium hand. You should then only value bet the hand and let them bet into you at the same time. You should be able to take big chunks of there chip stack, when ever you hit a hand.
Another type of player is the Loose-Aggressive, This is a new kind of player that have developed a style to combat the Tight aggressive players, a good loose aggressive player or LAG for short is very hard to beat and should be avoided. However a bad LAG is just as easy to beat as the inexperienced poor players described above, again just hit a hand and allow them to bet into you.
Playing a LAG
A bad LAG with play less than good hands on a regular basis, so it becomes fairly easy to trap them once you get yourself a Premium hand, once entering the table you want to have Position on them as well. (You always want to be the player immediate to the left) This is to make sure that you every hand isnt re-raised in a heart beat.
LAGs by nature play far to many marginal hands, it is for this reason that you can afford to adopt a passive style against them.You Have to wait for the right hand, because when you hit that hand, you know the money will be going into the pot. However as a words of caution, make sure when that moment comes, you are actually holding the best hand. If not, you could be in for loosing a sizeable amount in one hand.
Before you do try and label a player as a bad LAG you need to observe there game for a bit and identify if they have made big errors, and if so how often they make them. Because coming up against a good LAG can become a costly exercise as they will also flood the pot Pre and Post Flop but rest assured if the pot grows to a substantial amount and they are still in it you can guarantee they are holding a good hand, you should try to avoid tables that contain these players as it become very difficult to win at them.
The main difference that splits a good LAG from a bad one is self control a good LAG knows when to calm there play down, where as a bad LAG doesn’t meaning that even though they can build big amounts on a table they can loose it just as easily. Always try and determine whether a player is a strong or weak LAG as this could be the difference between you making and loosing money at that table
Obviously in poker you very rarely if ever get a table with just Tight of just Loose players sitting at it More often that not have a mix of the both so for these real life situations. The ability to be able to change gears and your game play at the drop of a hat will make you a very tough opponent you need to identify the poor player at each table whether it a player who is too Tight or too Loose, you need to exploit these player and play as many hands against them as possible if they limp in raise them up and back them into a corner the more and more hands you can play heads up with these poor players the easier the money you can earn.
It is necessary if you are going to become a successful player to adapt to both styles of play be it loose or aggressive and you also need to identify between the poor players from each of these styles once you can do this at every table you sit at you will start to win money hand very regularly while minimizing potential losses not only strengthen your game and table image but build a very Healthy Bankroll in the process.
Adapting Your Play - The Tight Game
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