Learning a more aggressive style

[WastedTalent]

I am a fairly-new poker player who just finished reading the HOH series and enjoyed it thoroughly. However, Dan Harrington is a pretty "tight" player, as he himself will say, and I am interested in reading someone who is a bit more aggressive (or even super-aggressive). Harrington notes that the conservative style is just one of many ways to play NLHE successfully, but that the more aggressive styles require more skill and practice. I also find it interesting that in his examples, the players labeled as aggressive and super-aggressive are almost always the chip leaders. So, I was just curious about this apparently more difficult style of play, and was looking for some good resources (preferably books) on the subject. Recommendations? Thanks.

[Niediam]

I'd try Erick Lindgren's book.

[Splossy]

I think you find that in tournaments the very agro players usually either have a big stack......or are out entirely.

Remember that tight and agressive are not mutually exclusive. It sounds like you want to investigate the loose-agro style as much as anything. I don't know of any books that give a complete strategy for it. You really need to be a good post flop player to make it work i think and that comes from experience.

[BigAlK]

Snyder's "The Poker Tournament Formula" will give you some ideas.

Don't let Mason see you call Harrington tight though. That can only lead to trouble.

[icemanjmw]

I agree with Splossy. I don't want to oversimplify it, but many of the hyper-aggressive players have a double up or go home attitude about tournaments. They have no desire to sit around with an average or low stack and risk being blinded out at bubble time. They decide to go for the win, and if they lose at least they didn't waste much time doing it.

Now about how to learn an aggressive style, again I agree with Splossy this takes experience at the table. I am by no means a great-aggressive player but I am learning more and becoming a better player all the time. I started off playing tight and gradually as I see what works in certain situations I learn to recognize when I can pick up pots with a move. However being a pretty tight player has allowed me to win at the low limits and get experience at the same time. IMHO you should follow a strategy similar to HoH vol 1 and as time passes you will feel more comfortable and move towards opening up a little.

[ QUOTE ]
I think you find that in tournaments the very agro players usually either have a big stack......or are out entirely.

Remember that tight and agressive are not mutually exclusive. It sounds like you want to investigate the loose-agro style as much as anything. I don't know of any books that give a complete strategy for it. You really need to be a good post flop player to make it work i think and that comes from experience.

[/ QUOTE ]

[Humble Pie]

Vanessa Rousso is comming out w/ a book that might help... I think the title is 'RL Ratio and Agressive Calls' .

[jeffnc]

Poker Tournament Formula. (note: he does not claim to give good advice for long, slow tournament structures. Although my thoughts related to variance and tournament profit suggest more aggression might be optimal for those types of tournaments as well.)

[Gonso]

Why not just loosen up your starting hand requirements a little bit, play a few more pots, and see how it goes? it seems like a lot of people want to become more aggressive just for the heck of it.

[Ace-Ex]

I think Harrington covers it pretty well in his books. He doesn't really discuss starting hand requirements all that much, but if you start playing a lot of hands you'll find out that you're almost always going to be on a shorter than average stack early in the tournament. This can present a real problem when you want to take a few chances against players with shorter stacks as well. When your opponent is shorter than you, they can't knock you out.

The key is switching up your play when there is a lot of dead money in the pot (like late in the tournament.) HOH not only discusses this, they give you a cookbook recipe for making decisions that ARE very aggressive based on the situation.


My recommendation as a new player is to play tighter than everyone else at the table, but add in a less quality hand every round (button orbit) and see if you can get lucky.

I know guys like Lindgren like to talk about acquiring all the chips as the key to the tournament, and he has a point.

But in my experience, the number of chips you have at the final table is less important than the use of selective aggression to determine your final results. Unfortunately, your fate is more tied into the cards if you're not a big stack, but people on the big stack tend to play a lot of pots and wind up relying on getting good cards to keep their stack anyway. It just seems like the big stack falls into a false sense of security and doesn't play their best mental game.

[WastedTalent]

Thank you everyone for the responses. A couple follow-up questions...

1) Lindgren's book looks interesting, but I'm not sure how useful I would find it. I see it's gotten mixed reviews, and I'm not exactly playing deep-stacked, expensive poker, which seems to be its focus. Is it worth the read, or is my time better spent elsewhere?

2) At first I was excited as I read the amazon reviews all singing Poker Tournament Formula's praises, thinking I had found a great book, but after reading the 2p2 threads, I'm not so sure. The general consensus here seems to be that it is misleading, and even when it is correct it is through faulty reasoning. Am I wrong in this perception?

3) Pardon my noobishness, but why is Harrington not a "tight" player?

4) Gonso, correct me if I am wrong, but isn't there more to be aggressive/super-aggressive than simply starting hand requirements? Sure, back when I didn't know anything about poker I would pay to see just about every flop, but I didn't have much success doing that...as Splossy said, you have to a great post-flop player to do well as an aggressive player.

Thanks