Poker is inherently a competitive game. You play with real money on the line, which means you naturally want an advantage over other players to win more. Because of this competitiveness, poker players have developed many strategies and techniques to win. These range from using math to determine if betting is a good idea to identifying the possible hands their opponents could have.
A core aspect of poker strategy that has evolved throughout the years is determining the playstyles of your opponents. While each player has unique habits and playstyles, people have noticed recurring traits in the two centuries that poker has been around. This led to them creating the four main poker playstyles: Loose-passive, tight-passive, tight-aggressive, and loose-aggressive. This poker guide will focus on the loose-aggressive playstyle and tell you everything you need to know, from how it works to how to beat it.
What does LAG mean?
LAG is a shortened form of the loose-aggressive playstyle. These players are loose, meaning they play a wide variety of opening hands. They are also aggressive, meaning they prefer to bet and raise than passively check and fold. This hard-to-execute, high-risk, yet high-reward playstyle requires a lot of experience to pull off. While many poker pros use this potentially highly profitable style, it is not recommended for beginners because of the difficulty and risk involved.
Advantages of the LAG style:
Playing the LAG style can give you a significant advantage, especially over tighter players. You can easily intimidate tight-passives and inexperienced TAGs (tight-aggressives) thanks to the wide variety of hands you play. It is harder for opponents to guess your next moves, thanks to the unpredictability of your play style. LAG players do not need to rely on luck giving them a good hand, so they have more potential opportunities to win. Finally, the inherent risk of being a LAG makes every game exciting and stops you from getting burned out like you might if you were a TAG.
Disadvantages of the LAG style
The LAG style, for all its potential benefits, has a lot of consequences you must consider if you want to play it. It has a lot of variance because of the sheer number of hands you play, meaning it’s less consistent than the tight-aggressive style. It requires fearlessness and experience reading others, which is why it is not recommended for beginners. Finally, it is not the best idea vs. loose-passive players since it is harder to bluff them, and slow-playing can counter a LAG’s aggression.
How to play the LAG style well
It is important to remember that being a LAG is not for everybody. It is very demanding, and for beginners, it is better to try out the TAG playstyle and widen your range over time. With this in mind, here are a few tips to help improve your LAG gameplay:
Beating LAG players
While a LAG might seem unpredictable and impossible to win against, no poker playstyle is perfect. That is why the pros constantly adapt and change how they play from game to game. Knowing this, here are a few strategies to beat LAG players:
Practicing poker online
We hope this article taught you everything you need to know about the LAG playstyle. Learning the different poker playstyles and their weaknesses is essential to learning how to play poker. The best way to practice identifying your opponents’ playstyle is by playing online poker on sites like {{GGPoker}}, the world’s largest poker room. You can play many games at once and use poker trackers and heads-up displays to find helpful information about your opponents. GGPoker offers a free poker tracker plus a heads-up display to all their users, so sign up today!
