Playing Tight vs. Playing Loose
One of the biggest choices that any poker player makes with regards to his or her style is whether or not to play tight. Playing tight is often a double-edged sword. As just about every person knows, certain hands have a better probability of winning than others. Thus playing only these hands is sure to point to a higher probability of winning money or chips in the end. The problem is that poker is not a game solely based on skill and percentages. The game involves quite a good deal of luck, bluffing, and betting style.
For instance, a player can choose to not play any hands that are worse than top-ten in poker hands. But what happens if he or she only gets one or two of these hands within one or two hours? The player is basically depending on these hands to win big amounts of chips. If this does not happen because of a bad beat, a quick fold, or any other reason…the player is basically doomed to losing his or her blinds and, at best, finishing even with their chip count.
And its not like big hands win everytime either. As mentioned before, bad beats happen quite often. Pocket aces have been defeated by a lower pocket pair. Straights get knocked down by full houses and flushes fall to higher flushes. Most hands, it is going to be pretty hard to know from the start whether or not you should bet all your chips.
Playing loose can solve this problem. Opening up the card book to allow for slightly worse hands is a good way to get into a lot of pots. And being in more hands is a good way to increase your chances of hitting the big hand you need to bankroll future games. Of course, playing too many hands and losing or folding a lot can result in heavy losses due to the blinds or better hands taking your chips.
So which strategy is best? Only you can decide that. But we will discuss both in further detail on this blog in the future to help guide you more.
Filed under: Strategies
