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 Switching up your game from aggressive to tight to semi aggressive.
Switching up your poker strategy from being aggressive to being tight and then to being semi aggressive is probably one of the most vital parts of a good winning poker strategy. If you stay in one mode all the time you will not be able to win at poker you have to switch between different playing styles to keep your opponents on their toes. This part of a successful poker strategy becomes especially important if you play at the same place against the same opponents. Even if it is you first time in this particular poker room, if you are like most players you plan on staying a while so figure 4 to 8 hours of playtime. Even then if you do not switch up your game you will stop winning because the other poker players will get a read on you. In a online poker room people come and go on a table so much you may be able to get way with playing the same game for a while but even then those players that have been sitting there for a while are on to your poker strategy. So even in a online poker room where there is lots of traffic coming and going you have to switch it up.
Lets look at a example of how to switch from being aggressive to tight and somewhere in between.
Lets say you are sitting in a online poker room at a $1/$2 table. You buy in for $100. I sometimes like to sit out a few hands especially when playing in an online poker room. I want to sit and see a few hands to see what the table and players are like. OK so a few hands go by and you are on the button with 10 8 of Clubs. You decide to start of in your aggressive mode. Everyone limps in and you make it 15 to play. You really don?t care if you get action or not, if you don?t you rake the blinds if you do you have position on your side. You get one caller. The flop comes K 5 3. Your opponent checks to you and you come out firing. ?You make it 25 to play ? He folds and here you don?t want to muck your cards you want to show the bluff. Most of the time when you do this in a online poker room you are set for action. This really goes for real play too. Now you have established your self as a aggressive player. You raise a few more times with J10, and 53 suited when you sense weakness. So now youre down say 15 dollars from your buy in after about 40 min of play. This is just paying your dues at this point. So now you switch form an aggressive poker strategy to a tight one. Only playing hi pocket pairs and hands like AK. Well the table doesn?t know that you switched from an aggressive poker style to a tight one so they are still figuring you to be the manic at the table that pushes action with 8 10 suited and such. Lets say a few hands go buy and you catch AA. This is really what you were setting up for before plus maybe hitting some lucky flops. Now you have a monster starting hand. You make it 20 to play which is an aggressive bet but the last time you made it twenty to play you had 6 8 suited. You narrow the field down to one caller. The flop comes A 5 10. You continue to play the hand aggressive and rake a monster pot against AK. That is the important part of switching it up you will get action with monster hands and now your opponents are having to figure you out last time you made this raise you had suited semi connectors and this time you have AA. Well they didn?t know you switched modes. Now youre sitting on 275 in chips and switch to being semi aggressive, meaning you still push action with 8 10 or Q10 suited but only when you sense weakness. 30 minutes may go by and you switch back to tight then to aggressive and so on. This type of poker strategy will keep your opponents guessing whether you are playing in a online poker room or a casino. Every time your opponents think they have you figured out you switch it up on them this keeps them constantly trying to figure out how you play and that is exactly what a successful poker strategy does. Keep em guessing so no one can ever put you on a hand. If you have any worthwhile poker strategy to share please join our poker strategy discussion in our forum.
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