Getting The Balance Right

A few people have approached me recently to ask me about the importance of aggression in poker. Of course aggression is important and I am not going to say otherwise and I am a very aggressive player myself when I am involved in most pots.

But blind aggression is something else and can be a terrible weakness if implemented in the wrong circumstances. Any fool can be aggressive, I could teach that to a school kid in no time at all. But the skill is knowing when to be aggressive and how often.

I have lost count of all of the "hot shots" who have breezed into games that I have been in and thought that they could push everyone around all because they had seen someone do it on TV or they had read it in a book somewhere.

The trick is to get your ratios right, I get away with an awful lot both in Limit and NL because of the fact that my opponents believe me more because of how I play, underpinning all that is the fact that my ratio of aggression to non aggression is pretty good.

Been playing on the 3-6 NL this week and done quite well and also had a couple of good sessions at 30-60 limit although one of the games was very tough and I should have left but I had a rush of cards that was something else.

I dont always play 25-50 NL, the game needs to be very good, there are many strong players in those games that I will not tangle with because I have no discernable edge. I spend more time watching that game these days but I know when weak players are active so my time is not entirely wasted.

Hope that you have a good weekend,

See you soon

The Dean