Play the Player, But Know How to Play the Cards Too

Winning at the game of poker by using a systematic approach is not difficult to do. Yes, you must know how to play and understand the common poker strategies of the day. Yes you need to pay attention to your opponents and develop individual counter-strategies against them on the fly. However for most games a simple observation of the tempo of the table will allow you to apply a winning approach.

The fact is that most players are losers because they play the same way all the time. The real secret of the game is adaptability. It is rare to find a table full of players who are adapting to changing conditions. All you have to do is analyze table conditions and then apply the appropriate system below.

Poker System #1: Play TAG at Loose, Passive Tables

TAG stands for tight-aggressive. This is the style of play that most people who study poker strategy first learn to implement and there is a good reason for it. It works, as long as there are not too many good players in the game. For smaller stakes games it cannot be beat, and you will crush your home game playing this style of poker.

As the name suggests, the strategy is to play very tight but bet and raise aggressively whenever you get into a pot. You should be folding 85% of your hands at the beginning and raising most of the other 15% of the time that you enter the pot. With a few exceptions, you want to be the aggressor in any pot that you play. Notice how you aren't wasting your chips messing around making calls with mediocre hands. Save them for making raises with on your strong hands.

Playing TAG will win you money if most of your opponents are playing loose and somewhat passively. That means they are basically doing the opposite of you, playing most of their hands but not raising a lot. While you will have your ups and downs, if they are playing loose-passive it will literally be like putting a vacuum cleaner on their chip stacks most of the time. However do not be so stubborn with this style of play that you cannot change gears if the table tightens up.

Poker System #2: Play LAG at Tight Tables

LAG stands for loose-aggressive. This is the style of play that most poker professionals play. It is more difficult to handle than playing TAG, and requires a degree of skill in the use of  judgment to understand when to back down from a pot and when an opponent is probably just playing back at you. However at a low-action table where the pots are small and people seem afraid to gamble, this system will grind away profits steadily with very little risk.

So for this strategy what you are doing is playing most of your hands but are raising with them to open the pot. You should be winning many small pots uncontested when your tight opponents all fold. That buys a lot of equity and will self-finance your involvement in the few bigger pots where some gambling must be done. Your opponents won't have the luxury of all those extra chips that you have (from all the small pots you keep winning) when these rare situations occur.

Playing LAG is a killer against tight-passive players. It is also the only way to win when you are short-handed or playing one-on-one. Because you are playing so many hands your opponents won't respect your bets and raises when you do have a big hand and you will probably get paid off handsomely. That is the real secret to this system: Winning monster pots that the tight opponents could never win because when they raise everybody knows what they have.

Notice how both of these systems so far involve playing aggressively. That is winning poker, in a general sense. You want an extra way to win then just having the best cards, that is having everybody fold and give you the pot. But you do need to properly categorize the game type before deciding whether to play TAG or LAG if you want to be profitable. There is one time to play passively, however, and that will be our final system.

Poker System #3: Calling Down a Maniac

The most money you will ever make at poker is likely to come from a ridiculously over-aggressive player. They are known as maniacs. They are easy to spot; they raise almost every single hand. Most people have trouble playing against them -- but you shouldn't. In fact you should actively seek this type of player to have in your game.

The correct counter-strategy is to act weak and meekly call them whenever you have a decent hand. You want to wait until you are heads up against them in a pot and then just call them down, no matter how much they bet, with any decent hand. You may end up losing a lot of chips if they happen to really have a good hand this time, but the odds are in your favor. Keep playing them and keep calling them down and you will eventually have all their chips, assuming they stay in the game long enough for you to get them!

Learn to use these three poker strategies at the correct times and you can make lots of money playing poker.

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