I’ve been playing no limit Texas Hold’em for roughly six years now and have gained a lot of knowledge of the game. I have managed to win quite a lot of money from playing both free online poker and also pay poker games. I have also managed to lose plenty of games too. The times I have lost are normally due to playing an aggressive player. I’m tend to play my poker quite aggressively too and I quite enjoy being faced with another player who plays the same tactics as me.
Lately I have changed my poker play which have started to up my winnings. I have coined a new term for my new strategy and style of play called “aggressive hugger”. It is the purpose of this article to explain the “aggressive hugger” strategy.
I believe that the key to winning majority of the time is to play conservative, also known as a tight player. There are loads of poker players who do not understand the game all that well and by playing conservatively (being a tight player) should enable you to win more money from those players.
When I talk about playing conservative I mean only calling a raise pre-flop with the top 10-15 starting hands. A better time to play a hand with the top 15-20 hands would be if there was no raise pre-flop at the time, otherwise you should mostly be playing the top 10-15 starting hands.
Winning consistently you shouldn’t really chase straight draws very often especially for medium to large bets. When you are playing low stakes or free online poker tournament games you shouldn’t be trying to steal the blinds even if you are the button, also known as the dealer position.
The reasoning for this is when you are playing a low stakes or play money game most of the time the players just call with anything decent or even very bad hands a lot of times. When you are playing for lows stakes or on free poker sites then winning a lot of times isn’t as important to the players as if they were playing for high stakes.
In poker there is a thing called position. Position is the spot you are playing from, for instance the first position after the cards are dealt is a lot different from the big blind position or the dealer position. What position your in will tell u how you should play the hands your dealt sometimes and who will be first to act pre-flop and after the flop, position is when it will be your turn. Conservative players tend to watch closely to positions and their poker play and what style of play they should adapt to their position.
Following the traditional, conservative strategies mentioned above explains the “hugger” part of my newly coined phrase. In the poker world, a “hugger” is referred to someone who plays very tight conservative poker. In order to bring in second word “aggressive”, I will explain how that is incorporated into my new found strategy.
Aggressive play is usually all about large pre-flop raises with great cards, followed by aggressive continued betting. In addition, an aggressive player usually will not show weakness when betting his/her hand despite the cards on the board. An aggressive player usually believes and portrays that he/she has the best hand.
So the combined elements of a conservative or “hugger” and the aggressive style of play are combined to form the “hugger/ aggressive’ strategy. Observing a conservative style by playing premium hands in an aggressive manner is my new adopted strategy. While holding premium hole cards, I will then play them in an aggressive manner by raising large pre-flop bets in accordance with position techniques while utilizing aggressive betting strategies.
Give it a go, try being an aggressive hugger on free online poker sites and low stakes and as long as you’re an OK player I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how well it works.
