Translated with the help of AI. We apologize for any errors and would appreciate your help in correcting them.
Translated by order of the educational portal university.poker
Article by Oscar Sand, original source: EVPoker
Old-fashioned poker theory suggests a game based on a secret and aggressive game. But the situation changed after young online poker players proved that more money could be won by playing in a different, so-called losovo-aggressive (LAG) or even hyper-lusovo-aggressive style. The main advantage of the LAG style is that you can win many pots without having good hands. It just means you can potentially win with a higher frequency.
While it is true that most of the winning players are tag, at the very peak of the peak, the truly great online players are LAGs.(Mark Vos)
1. Appropriate aggression in preflop and postflop poker
When some players try to change their tag style to LAG style, they do it indecisively, which leads to incorrect play. Let's say if you play the preflop luzo, you should be prepared to do so after the flop. When you make a raise on the preflop, get a call from the opponent, and on the flop do not make a bet, you render the opponent a double service: you increase the pot and give it away without a fight (if the opponent had the intelligence and courage to make a bet). This may be an exaggeration, but in principle it is true. Of course, you can refrain from bet ting and instead equalize the opponent's bet.
This is something you more or less need to do if you don't bet yourself. But in general, if you are going to behave passively on the post-flop, you better refrain from raising on the pre-flop at all. That doesn't mean you have to keep betting on post-flop 100 times out of 100 when you bet on pre-flop. This would be suboptimal as it makes you vulnerable to bluff check-raises from an opponent who watches for patterns. But your standard post-flop game should be aggressive if you do a pre-flop raise. If you increase the pot, you need to fight for it. The texture of the flop will dictate when you should avoid an extended bet.
If three junior cards are dealt on the flop, your villain will probably not believe that you caught something, and so the bet will often be called to.
On the other hand, if you caught something, just place a bet, you will get nice implied odds! The frequency of bet also depends on the style of the opponent. If he is a call machine (“calling-station”), you should place bet in fewer pots when you are not on the board. The same can be said if you meet a very aggressive player who often raises your bet. But the standard game is to make a continued bet. This will allow you to win many pots, since in most cases your opponent has nothing. Many players often make a call to watch the flop, but are not very interested in fighting for the pot without a hand. This is one of the reasons why the LAG approach is so beneficial.
2. Hyper-loose-aggressive style
For many players, being simply lusovo-aggressive was not enough, and then a hyper-lusovo-aggressive style was born. Obviously, there have always been players who could be described as maniacs at the poker tables. But we're talking about something else entirely: a winning hyper-loose-aggressive strategy. From the point of view of old-fashioned poker theory, it was unrealistic to play hyper-luxury or even just hyper-aggressively and win. But in the days of online poker, everything changed. A lot of evidence has been found, at both low and high stakes, that the hyper-lag style can be extremely effective.
Why does it work? Mainly because in games like Texas holdem, you only have two cards and in most cases your starting hand will not be very good. And after the flop, your hand will often remain that way. Therefore, placing bet without a decent hand makes sense. Another reason is that in the era of online poker, 6-max tables are much more common than 9-max. Full tables with 8-10 players were the standard in regular casinos. It is more profitable to fill the area with such tables, since fewer dealers are required per player. But online poker sites have unlimited space.
Playing at a table with eight other players is not the same as playing with five other players.
When you have eight people at the table, the risk of the other player having a better hand is much higher. For this reason, attempts to "steal" a pot with mediocre hands rarely work. So don't try to play hyper-lose-aggressive poker on these tables. This should be done at 6-max tables or in tournament formats involving only two, three or four players. Hyper-loose-aggressive style is not suitable for everyone. You must be able to intimidate your opponents and attack many pots. And you have to be willing to lose in the short term. All forms of LAG style play increase variance: you will have both more good sessions and more really bad ones. Not everyone can handle it morally.
3. loose-aggressive style in modern tournament poker
A successful LAG style game in multi-table tournaments (MTT) requires a lot from the player. If in general we can say that the tag style is more repelled by cards, then the LAG style is more focused on the game against the opponent. Yes, you will make a profit, provided that most players do not have good cards in most cases. But you should also watch the players closely to find out which ones will fight hard for lots of pots and which ones will give them away with less resistance. Also, the loose-aggressive style in MTT implies constant adjustment to each emerging game situation. Everything here matters: the size of the stacks, the type and stage of the tournament, the positions of the players participating in the hand, etc.
In general, the loose-aggressive style cannot be used without a deep understanding of post-flop, the development of which is aimed at current pre-flop charts and other materials presented on our training portal Exan13.
Another difficulty is the ability to "switch" the gear in time as the ICM pressure in the tournament increases. Weak-plus decisions at an early stage can become negative as the blinds grow. Therefore, special attention should be paid to the study of ICM factors and their impact on tournament strategy.
4. Conclusion: Recommendations for beginners
- At an early stage of a poker career, beginners should focus on learning the basic secret-aggressive (tag) strategy and gaining experience playing ICM in low and medium number of participants (LME) tournaments.
- To competently build your pre-flop strategy, use the charts posted on the portal of our school.
- As you improve your game skills, gain experience and grow by limits, learn advanced post-flop and gradually expand the playable range, learn and remember situations that are beneficial for extracting additional EV.
- Advanced postflop is recommended to be studied after the techniques described in the course "Optimal preflop ranges. LEVEL 3”, and transition to medium and high limits.
