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POKER STYLE: TIGHT OR LOOSE

Once you start playing in tournaments, you see a good mix of poker styles and how you measure against each.  In most instances, if you’re like me, you try to stay cautious and play as conservatively as possible.  You can’t afford to lose early in the game with careless decisions with no decent hand to back you up.

Kind of Play

Personally, I like to start speculating a lot with fair hands during the early rounds of poker.  I do check out flops and see if I could come up with a good hand with my own pocket cards.  Now, in every tournament, you don’t get the chance to choose your table.  It might happen that you get a table with a different mix of stereotypes that would not usually suit your kind of play and that happened to me.

Losing Balance in Your Game

When faced with too many loose manic players, I had the tendency to be too extra cautious which made me play as little as possible.  When I do play a hand, I made sure it was a big one to start with.  Otherwise, I don’t play at all in that round.  With this attitude, I ended up winning pots with small bets on the flop.  Where’s the fun in that?  These small pots started to pale in comparison when the blinds started to get higher and my stack remained low.

Adapting to the Table

Learning from this mistake proved to be costly but it was worth it.  With tournaments, one should remain calm and level-headed.  I lost the game because I got too panicky with manic players.  But had I played my usual game instead of going too tight, I might have stood a chance.  By becoming too tight, I became too predictable which is why they can call bluffs and raise the bets without me giving them a fight at all because I wanted to make sure I got a big hand first before making a call or raising the bet.

One has to stay in rhythm with his own kind of game and things will start falling into place.  I’ve learned to be the one to put the pressure on my opponents instead of the other way around.  In tournaments, everyone wants to win but the one with the most determination gets the biggest pot every time.  Next time I play in tournaments I remember my mistakes and I have since learned how to master my fears.