Here’s Why You Should Try Being Aggressive at the Poker Table

There is more than one way to play the game of poker. However, the two most established approaches are a passive and an aggressive one.

It is possible to make a case for either of them as valid. Indeed, most professional players switch between the two approaches as the situation demands.

Overall it would be reasonable to say that playing aggressively is more often recommended by experts though. That is true whether you are playing in a land-based poker room or online Love casino.

In this article we will take a look at how an aggressive approach to poker can give you the upper hand psychologically, leading to success.

Land-based vs. Online

In the early days of playing poker online, there were big differences between that and playing at a land-based venue. For one thing, the online sites mostly offered video poker.

That is a format where the player is competing against algorithms. There are no human opponents involved. It meant that strategy was simply irrelevant when it came to online poker. In a video poker game, it does not matter whether you play passively or aggressively: the result is determined solely by the strength of your hand.

What changed things was the introduction of live poker gaming at online sites resembling the games you’d find in hotspots like Vegas. This uses video streaming to allow people to play poker against other human beings.

Now that online poker more accurately replicates the land-based experience, tactics such as aggressive play have more relevance to it. But what is aggression in poker and how can you benefit from it?

Aggression as Intimidation

It is important to note that aggression in a poker game does not refer to physical or verbal threats. It is a style of playing that is about unsettling and intimidating opponents, but within the rules of the game.

What it really means is that you try to control the game through frequent betting and raising. That is the opposite of a passive approach, where you either fold or call on most hands.

The idea behind an aggressive poker strategy is that you are continually upping the ante. If you know how and when to do that effectively, it can throw your opponents off their game and make them obsessed with you.

That obsession will eat away at them and cause them to act irrationally. Nobody can play good poker if they are making decisions with their emotions, so this will give you the upper hand.

That is how it works in theory, anyway. In practice, you will need to be clever in how you deploy your aggression during a poker game.

The Importance of Position

The term ‘position’ in poker refers to where a player is seated and the order of the betting. The best position to be in is the one where you bet last, because it lets you see what all of the other players have done and draw conclusions about their strength.

If you are in that position and you suspect that your hand is better than most others in the game, it is a good time to raise aggressively. This is an example of smart and strategic use of aggression in poker.

That sort of play is known as a ‘tight-aggressive’ one. The opposite is a ‘loose-aggressive’ approach which is far more scattershot.

Playing in that way will cost you, because your aggression is not properly focused. It is the kind of thing that people do when they allow factors like alcohol to affect their thinking.

You do not have to be in the best position to use an aggressive approach though. In fact, you can use strategic poker aggression to improve your position.

The time to try that is if there is a player positioned behind you who has limped in during the pre-flop betting. That means they have called the big blind rather than raising it.

This would suggest that they have a weak hand, so if you raise, there is a good chance that they will fold. That is referred to in poker as ‘buying position’ and it can really enhance your odds of winning the pot.

Aggression vs. Caution

Although there are clear benefits to playing poker aggressively, it should not always be your approach. The optimal tactic is the tight-aggressive one, which means going in hard on those hands where you think your chances are good.

Playing ‘tight’ poker means only playing those hands where the odds are in your favor. Therefore, from a psychological perspective, the best approach is a blend of aggression and caution. They complement each other rather than being oppositional.

There is a lot to be said for taking an aggressive approach to poker, but it must be tight instead of loose aggression.