There are four generic types of style in poker and these are based on how many hands you play and how you play those hands. So players who play few hands are “tight” and players who play far more are deemed loose. If you play your hands passively then you are either tight-passive or loose-passive and if you play them aggressively then you are either tight-aggressive or loose-aggressive. However there are certainly styles within styles and no two tight-aggressive players are the same and in fact can be vastly different in terms of skill and thus results.

The following hand will highlight what I mean here. I was playing in a Texas Hold em NL100 game a few days ago when the following hand came up. Now my style would be defined by many as tight-aggressive based on how few hands I play and then how I play those hands. It had been folded around to the cut-off who open raised to $3. A quick look at my PokerTracker stats revealed that this player had a high steal percentage and had steal raised on 10 of the 14 chances that he had previously.

My hand was A-J which was easily strong enough to play back given the hand strength and the fact that my opponent was likely stealing. I three bet to $12 and the big blind folded but my opponent called forcing me to play a hand out of position. The pot was $25 and the flop came 10s-8s-4c and now I had to decide how to proceed. I felt that a c-bet looked obvious but I wanted him to feel less confident about his hand and the best way to do that was to take it further into the hand. If I bet then I would be doing so blind and so I checked and he bet $12.

I called looking to check-raise the turn and the turn came and was the 7s and I checked again looking to check raise. The pot was $49 and I checked but my opponent checked also. The river card was the 2s and I didn’t want to check and have my opponent check it back and show me something like a pocket pair for the best hand. So I shoved my remaining $71 in the middle and they folded and I took the pot. Liken this to another tight-aggressive player who also three bet pre-flop. They c-bet the flop and get called and then check the turn and fold to another barrel.

You can see the huge difference here in how two tight-aggressive players have played the same hand. While both were tight-aggressive pre-flop, the difference post flop was that I stayed aggressive while the other player became passive when the dollar figures increased. So you can see here that there are definite styles within styles and this is why the four main poker styles are nothing more than generic in nature. Knowing that someone is tight-aggressive basically doesn’t come anywhere near telling the full story.