The Great Debate: TAG vs. LAG

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When you first take up the game of poker you’ll be bombarded with all sorts of conflicting advice about how you should play the game. Some people will tell you to play “Tight and Aggressive” (TAG); others will say a “Loose and Aggressive” (LAG) approach will allow you to rule the roost. But there is a fundamental flaw in the debate between TAG and LAG, which will be the focus of this column.

Poker Is Complex

Like most complex undertakings, virtually every situation in poker is situational. There isn’t very much black & white in poker, just a whole lot of gray.

Think of it like being in a third-and-1 situation in football: some people may be yelling in your ear to run the ball because you have a great running back, while others are screaming for you to pass the ball because everyone in the stadium knows you are going to run! But football is more complex than this: What a coach needs to do is look at everything:

• Your strengths and weaknesses
• The strengths and weaknesses of your opponents
• Where on the field you are
• What your plans for 4^th down are if you don’t convert
• The time left in the game
• The score
• What you think your opponent expects you to do
• The defensive alignment of your opponent
• Are your players all at 100%? Are your opponents?

As you can see, just saying, “You should run the ball on 3^rd and 1” isn’t going to work in a complex game like football, and the same holds true for poker, especially when it comes to an all-encompassing strategy like TAG vs. LAG play.

Before getting into the complexities, let me start off with a rundown of the strengths and weaknesses of both TAG and LAG play.

The Classic TAG Approach

TAG players generally play “by the book”. This isn’t to say they don’t bluff or play non-standard hands from time-to-time just that their fallback style is to play good hands pre-flop and play them aggressively post-flop when they hit.

Don’t just assume you can run over a TAG, or that they always “Have it” when they bet. A good TAG player generally uses a “fit or fold” strategy but they also understand the principles of continuation betting, balancing their range, and bluffing.

A TAG style isn’t as sexy or exhilarating as playing the loosy-goosy style of a LAG, and focuses almost entirely on taking advantage of lesser skilled players and decreasing difficult decisions –which reduces variance.

The Strengths of the Tight/Aggressive style:

• Your decisions are usually pretty straightforward
• Most of your decisions will happen pre-flop and on the flop when the pot tends to be smaller
• You avoid playing hands that can put you in tricky situations
• Variance will be greatly reduced

The Weaknesses of the Tight/Aggressive style:

• You will be a target for LAG players
• You will leave some profit on the table in order to avoid high-variance situations
• Your style of play will be somewhat predictable
• Playing tight/aggressive can be very boring

The New-School LAG Approach

The new-school LAG approach to poker has created a slew of very tricky players who can show-up in almost any spot with any two cards. The approach requires a strong understanding of pre- and post-flop play, as well as position, excellent hand-reading skills and a deep knowledge of concepts like bet-sizing.

Playing a LAG style also requires the practitioner to be willing to take a number of risks that will increase variance considerably (sometimes taking slightly –EV spots in order to increase the EV of other situations), and requires more continued discipline and focus, and therefore more expenditures of mental energy.

The Strengths of the Loose/Aggressive style:

• Your big hands are more likely to get paid off
• You will win a lot of pots with aggression alone
• You will be seen as very unpredictable and feared
• You will leave very little profit on the table

The Weaknesses of the Loose/Aggressive style:

• You will be put into many marginal spots that require a good deal of thought
• It takes experience to play many of the LAG hands profitably
• Variance will be very high
• It’s easy to cross the line and turn into a maniac

The Comparison

So, there you have it, the basics of each style of play. Based on the descriptions above, if you asked people what style they would like to play, most are raising their hand to be LAG’s, since you get to play more hands, it’s far “sexier”, and in the long-run will win more money.

That last bit about more money is pretty important, and would seem to make LAG practitioners superior to TAG practitioners, who are generally more risk averse and patient than their LAG counterparts, who tend to push every edge they can. But there is another factor to consider. A factor you may have likely overlooked in the weaknesses part of the LAG style, and that factor is experience.

The experience needed to pull-off the LAG style is something most players are lacking, making it a difficult style to properly put into practice for most players.

For new poker players trying to employ the higher variance, harder to execute, LAG style of play is often a major mistake for two reasons:

• In the games you should be playing at this point in your career, TAG should get the job done. Unless you decide to start your poker career by playing the major Sunday tournaments or four-figure buy-in live events, you’ll find the TAG style quite profitable against the mostly unrefined competition you’ll face in the lower buy-in tournaments.
• You simply don’t have the experience to squeeze every bit of value out of a hand. Many of the hands LAG players choose to play are break-even at best, because the LAG practitioner is willing to play break even hands (even slight losers) because it is more than offset by the amount their big hands will earn. As a new player you are far more likely to find yourself confronted with a tricky post-flop decision that will lead to major mistakes; situations that a more experienced player can avoid.

As you progress as a player and gain experience you should be able to add more and more hands into your repertoire, and eventually you’ll be able to seamlessly shift between a TAG approach and a LAG approach depending on what the situation calls for; which is eventually where you want to be as a poker player; not where you should be starting out.

Trying to play LAG right of the chute is akin to driving a Formula 1 racecar the first time you get behind the wheel.

Just realize that nobody is saying you can’t work your way up to become an F1 racer, or that you have to drive a Toyota Corolla for the rest of your life. What I’m saying is that you’ll have a much better track-record as a driver (and fewer accidents along the way) if you start off with a car you can handle, so that by the time you get behind the wheel of an F-1 racecar you’ll feel comfortable and be able to handle it.

Based on my own anecdotal experience, when you are starting out in poker you should lean towards a TAG approach, and slowly transition to a LAG over time, allowing yourself to gain the experience you need. And as you will see below, there is a second benefit to this formula.

Blurred Lines

Virtually every player you encounter will fit into either the TAG or LAG category (some better than others), but no two players will be exactly the same –the TAG and LAG parties have big tents—and many players will blur the lines. And the more you blur the lines the better.

Earlier I advocated starting as a TAG and slowly progressing towards becoming a LAG, but this isn’t 100% accurate. The end-game you should be aiming for is to be able to play both; transitioning between TAG and LAG as the situation warrants.

While this all sounds really simple, very few players can just turn the switch from TAG to LAG or back again. So what most poker players end up with is a style of play that is a percentage of each with a heavy slant towards one or the other; perhaps 75% TAG and 25% LAG. Furthermore, most players have a “fallback” style that they start a tournament with, or revert to in unfamiliar situations.

So as you can see, the debate between playing TAG or LAG is silly –just like running or throwing on 3^rd down in football—because the correct answer is simply that “It depends.” But what isn’t silly is that the best players are able to look at things situationally, and formulate the right plan. These players are not TAG or LAG; they don’t fit into any box; and you should aspire to be one of them.