My current style of play is what I would call pretty LAG. My main problem seems to be that I at times spew chips away at times unnecessarily.

My main question is if there is any material that can be read as to how to play LAG, not against, but how to PLAY it yourself. I tried searching the forums but there is extremely little to read about it.

Anyone know any good sources to read?

'Small stakes NL holdem' and lots of video training sites promote loose agressive play.


Play a solid TAG game. When you know who the fish are, how tight the blinds are when you are in LP, how well you can bluff postflop, etc...

Open up your game preflop when conditions are right with position, making isolation raises and stealing lots of blinds.

Take a lot of stabs at small pots postflop when you have a decent chance to take it down and get a loose maniacal image.

But play tight in big pots where your image gets your opponents to make big mistakes.

Against calling stations or micro/low stakes opponents you don't want to play LAG at all. People don't even notice your image. You can play a bit looser preflop, but only because you get paid off so much better postflop when you make a hand. You need to make a hand though.

With otherwise good play, just don't get into big hands without a big hand. Make folds if you think you're beaten.

That's the biggest mistake of LAG play, losing too much when you don't have a strong hand.

There isn't going to be a book or article that teaches you how to "play LAG" because all that really means is playing more hands and playing them aggressively. Playing LAG well is just having good enough hand-reading skill to know when how your hand meshes with your opponent's range.

The question is not, "How do I play LAG?" The question is, "How do I read hands and how do I act on my reads?"

Study small ball...Its a lag style

There are lots of good books. Negreanu's Power Hold'Em strategy covers small ball, and Gus Hansen's Every Hand Revealed are both good for this. Probably also the Poker Tournament Formula books.

My previous post describes how I would approach a game before I know how to exploit my opponents and how I would exploit bad players by loosening up. But playing some style of poker is wrong in essense imo. A reactive style is much more profitable: Make the highest EV play based on what you think about your opponent's range and tendencies and be right most of the time.

If this means you play small ball or big bet poker, tight or loose, agressive or passive, whatever, so be it. Just don't try to play a certain style just because you like it or think it's right for some reason other than exploiting your opponent as much as you can.

Also run hot obv .

'Small stakes NL holdem' and 'NLHE theory and practice' (especially the concepts in the end of the book), are the best books for NLHE imo.

Excellent advice!

Moshman's Heads Up book is a LAG book. Read it!

I wish more people would write LAG books. 99% of people would try the strategies and just spew like crazy. I'd love to play against them.

I have Negreanu's book, but haven't read it. Small ball and loose aggressive play don't seem like they mix well. If you're going to play loose aggressive, you have to adapt a long ball approach, or what Dan Harrington refers to as a super-aggressive style.


A few things you have to remember when playing a loose aggressive style:

- You cannot do things like check to the raiser, if that's something you're accustomed to doing as a tight player. You will have to bet out your hands immediately on the flop if you have a good hand.

- You will have to be accustomed to at least double barrel bluffing. If you aren't comfortable double barrel bluffing, then loose aggressive won't be your style.

- You will have to loosen up post flop. If you play in tourneys, you will be stacking people with hands like top pair, middle pair, and sometimes even bottom pair. The reason why you will be stacking them off with such weak holdings is because your opponents will start playing back at you.

- You will have to frequently defend your bets and raises because players will be playing back at you with sometimes nothing. This means that if you adapt the LAG approach with the long ball style, other players will frequently check-raise you, or try to push you off your hands. So in turn, you will have to have good hand reading skills and you will have to call down people lightly if you think they are semi-bluffing you.

- You will be making a lot of tough decisions. Because you're loose aggressive, you will have to push people out of pots, and frequently double up when you do hit the flop, to compensate all the times that you enter a pot and lose the hand. There will be a lot of fluctuation in your chip stack.


- You will have to change gears, frequently go into tight mode, and if you are playing against players that are better than you, you will frequently lose most of your chips or money by playing the loose aggressive style.


- You will have to know when to fold good hands. The tough part of playing loose aggressive is that you may sometimes be going all-in with bottom pair or drawing hands, but at the same time, you'll also be folding hands like flushes and two pair. You have to know when to fold one and push with the other.


Loose aggressive combined with the long ball approach is probably the most effective style in tournaments. But it isn't easy to play. The only player to have this style truly mastered is Phil Ivey and other pros. And you have to remember that when you play this style, you have to continue to be aggressive.

There's a lot of good stuff in here, but a few misconceptions imo. Got to put this straight.

this doen't make sense. A lag has a wide range and although he should be more agressive with more hands overall a lag shows less agression. Defend a weak range by playing strong hands weak when out of position. Sure donking has it's place, but it does in a tag strategy as well.
sure, but so should a tag
Although some might start playing back a bit more loosely overal people don't adjust well. A lag style has the best of these people when they fold. When they finally pick up a hand a good lag doesn't ship all those carefully stolen moneys back expecting his second pair to be best.
Same as above. You just take the money when they give up and get it in more easily when you have a strong hand. Trying to outadjust someone that adjusts to your loose exploitive play is done by reverting to a more solid style and get paid off, not by outmaniacing him.
exactly
A good lag is really risking a little in a lot of small pots and constantly threatening to build big pots. When the pot gets big he usually has the best of it though, not only because his opponents play back more lightly, but mostly because a good lack is tight in big pots. This is what I would consider smallball. Not sure if there is an official definition and what it is though .

Long ball relies on a strong and solid range. I don't see how playing loose and big bet poker at the same time will work in any game, including tournaments. It's what maniacs do and it doesn't work out well in the long run. It can do wonders if variance goes your way though

I usually play TAG; but I was in a rather tight game and decided to try Small Ball;
Well it didn't work; my opponents adjusted rather perfectly; they ALL began 3 betting my preflop raises.

what do you mean by smallball. My definition of small ball comes from Harrington's book, where you take a lot of small risks to try to gain a lot of small wins. It comes from the baseball term, which describes teams that try to keep players on the bases, and the runs coming in one by one.

Longball, coined by Harrington, is the equivalent to baseball's power hitting, run producing teams, like the teams with Mantle and Maris, or Conseco and Mcgwire.


Long ball works well with LAG because you have to compensate for all those pots that you lose. Because long ball combined with LAG allows you to win big pots with mediocre hands, usually because you are pushing people off of medium sized pots, or getting paid off when you do flop monster hands because players are more willing to play back at you.

Of course LAG and the long ball approach don't have to be combined. But Harrington defines this type of play as the super-aggressive style. And when you play this style well, or you play this style and everything seems to fall into place for you (which happens occasionally), you will build massive chip stacks (in tourneys), and make some big gains playing in cash games (especially if you're up against players who are willing to play loose against you).

Yes, this is what I forgot to mention. Good lags are tight in big pots.

This is big, and why I will call down people's all-in with bottom pair or shove all-in with drawing hands.


Remember, that if you play Very loose aggressive, long ball, AND it's important that you remember that I'm referring to tournaments, you will be a marked man. Again, this is also something I like to do in smaller buy in tourneys, to build up a large stack, and while the players post flop skills are still modest, and I won't end up getting myself trapped.

Like yesterday, I was able to stack off 7 people in the first two rounds of a 10 dollar knockout tourney on full tilt. So I had about 20,000 chips when the average stack was maybe 3000 chips. Of course I was running very hot, and got paid off when I did flop monster hands. But I was also having players play back at me a lot too.

So as an example, I raised in early position with 4 7(o), and got one caller. The flop came 848, and I made a pot sized bet. My opponent went all in, for like 3000 chips, I called, and all they had was AQ, so I stacked them.

Of course, most people were calling me a fish for playing like this, and yes I admit, I was getting lucky and playing like a maniac due to my large chip stack. But that's what I mean by making some loose post-flop calls.


But yes, for the most part, when you are playing tough opponents, don't have a monster stack, or playing in cash games etc, you should be playing tight in big pots as a LAG player.

Good point. In HOH1, Harrington describes situtions where he might change his style every few hands in a tournament. On page 98, he talks about basing your play on what your opponents probably think of you:

"1. How many hands have I been playing? 2. How many hands have I actually shown down? 3. What would a keen observer think of me at this point?"

An example he give is that if you're a tight player getting a great run of cards, you opponents might see you raising almost every pot, and think you're a maniac. In that case, big moves and bluffs won't work so well, so you have to play even tighter, even if your original intention was to start tight and gradually loosen up.

Yes, you're right, and I'm wrong.


But LAG with longball play is more of something that can be accomplished in tournaments, and playing when you are better than a high percentage of the players. You also need a very large stack to combine LAG with long ball, and it isn't something you can do very profitably in cash games.


I always see one or a few players in small buy in tourneys adapting the combined long ball LAG method, and usually they are pounding the other players. And of course, in the big tourneys, Phil Ivey adapts the Long Ball and LAG combined approach. There's little secret to how Ivey plays, yet he still seems to run over players even in the biggest tourneys, and there is little to counter his play.


And LAG with the long ball approach yields extremely high levels of variance. But of course if you make good decisions and get good cards, this is where you build the biggest stacks.

But of course, you can play good LAG by taking small stabs at pots, and getting paid more often when you do flop monsters. It just depends how you play it.

you can't play an effect lag style until you have a super solid theory foundation.

There's a fair amount of misinformation in this thread imo.

An excellent LAG player is always putting the other players stack at risk with minimal risk to their stack.

Adapting to the table and switching between longball and small ball is what you have to do. You previously were putting their stack at risk and making them fold because they weren't comfortable continuing with the hand in fear of you having a monster. You shouldn't be calling all-ins with third pair, etc when they realize what's up and start adapting to play against your style more effectively.

Being a good poker player means being able to adapt to your table. It usually means playing LAG in today's games, however playing LAG means you know you can profitable play more hands (for x,y,z reasons), and TAG means that in order to be profitable you will h ave to play a very select hands.

If you are playing XY hand be aware of why, just dont play it because you are a LAG and the LAGs hand chart say you should play it.

Get off your head that you are a LAG or a TAG, adapt to your table ffs.

damn, I always get beat by those XY's and never get dealt any X's or Y's. The biggest letter seems to be the Q, but for some reason the K beats it and so does the A. I think the letters are in reverse order, except the J, which is the worst of them all.

I'm not really sure what the stuff about small-ball and playing tight in big pots is supposed to mean. I mostly agree with xonath0. Especially in a cash game setting (don't know much about tournaments) playing LAG is just a function of relative skill. If your skill advantage is greater you can play more hands profitably preflop and to a lesser degree you can continue with a wider range after the flop.

Whether you are going to play straightforward or very bluffy in big pots just depends on how your opponents play. The main skills required to play a LAG game are the same that you need to play TAG. Good hand reading and understanding your opponents' tendencies. Probably the only qualitative difference is that managing and using your image is even more important when you're playing LAG.

Yes, I'm not much of a math player, but I've been reading some poker math books lately.

Rather than stating it as going all in with third pair, you can turn it into percentages stating, that looser play and a big stack may allow you to gamble on slightly -EV situations, where you will be stacking your opponent, and you will only be doing minimal risk to your own stack

I don't think it's about the skill advantage per se, it's more about the knowing-your-opponent's-tendencies advantage. When they fold too much, you should bet and raise more. When they call too much you tighten up and valuebet, when they don't seem to do either you change tables. Playing LAG or whatever style in a vacuum is never a good idea, you should ALWAYS know what you are doing and whom you are doing it against when you do anything else but bet or raise a strong hand. You have to know when an average hand is actually a strong hand against that opponent and you have to know when raising air is the nuts against this particular player. All this LAG/TAG/whatever stuff is just rules of thumb that gives you the beginning tools to make somewhat correct moves on the table, if you want to advance you need to know what your opponents, not you, are doing so that you can exploit their tendencies, even if that particular move would be extremely stupid in a vacuum.

I should have phrased that better. There are two possible reasons to play more hands. The first is that your opponents play too tight allowing you to take down the blinds more often. The second is that they make mistakes postflop and you know how to exploit these mistakes.

For the second one it doesn't really matter what kinds of mistakes your opponents are making. Even if they call too much post flop it's still profitable to play more hands preflop, hoping to hit a decent hand and valuebet. As long as the stacks are deep enough of course.

As for your last point, I agree 100%. Let the table conditions and cards dictate your play. Trying to force a certain style is a recipe for disaster. Speaking from experience of course.