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Poker Game Traits and Advantages - Tight and Loose

How no-limit Hold’em games are made up can differ greatly from one table to the another, depending on the player's lineup in every setting. Usually, just adding a single reckless player could change the game entirely from conservative and fairly tight to one where every player gets loose and chips begin to fly with hopes of winning money from that reckless player. Read on for several traits of tight games and loose games.

Tight Poker Games

•    Raises usually take blinds and continuation bets post-flop usually take pots if the bet pre-flop gets called.

•    Players will not be willing to place a lot of money into pots, even with quite strong hands like 10-10 and A-Q.

•    Big pots hardly ever develop because of a lack of players. Also, bluffs usually succeed because pots won’t be worth fighting for.

Loose Poker Games

•    Usually, raises get called. The same goes for significant re-raises.

•    Players will be willing to place tons of money into pots with mediocre hands like 5-5 and K-J.

•    Big pots and big bluffs tend to be commonplace and are usually less successful compared to loose card play bluffs. However, they are worth more if they work.

Now, what would be the advantages in each kind of game? First of all, loose games are better since you can be very selective and will most likely get paid off for big hands. However, to succeed within loose games of no-limit Hold’em, a big heart would be needed since there will be several tricky situations where you will face big bets. If you can find out when someone is bluffing and are brave enough to act on personal convictions, you will succeed within loose games. On the other hand, you need to find out when you should bluff to get several pots yourself.

Conversely, tight games have advantages, too. Within such games, aggressive players can get tons of little pots. This strategy would be highly effective within decent blind games. Make standard raises of thrice the size of the big blind to take a ton of pots. The ones you don’t win before the flop can generally be won at the flop with regular continuation bets of half the size of the pot.

Tight game players are usually also more straightforward, so you will come across fewer check-raise bluffs compared to loose games. Whenever somebody pushes back with check-raises or re-raises within tight games, it would be best to let go of mediocre hands. The blackjack strategy has something in common with this strategy.

About us

  • Thomas West Poker Club

    We are the group of poker professionals from Seward, Nebraska. Our club is named by the first county clerk of our town. We'd like to share our poker knowledge and establish connections with other USA local poker clubs.