Tight Play Is OK

“Some poker players play too loose and other poker players play too tight — but I have never met any of the ones that play too tight.” — Bill Smith, 1985 WSOP champion.

Like most poker platitudes, this one exaggerates the actual situation, but has a kernel of truth to it. As a poker coach, I can tell you that most of the people that come to me for help suffer from the same problem. They play too many hands. If you play “too tight,” you may not be making as much as you could at poker, but tight play is not going to be responsible for a long streak of red ink in your results.

How many starting hands you play depends on items like the poker variant you are playing, the betting and buy-in rules, whether it is a cash game or a tournament, and the ratio of stack size to the blinds and antes. If it is a tournament, important factors are how fast the blind structure goes up, whether an ante is in use, and whether the game is a full table or shorthanded.

The advice I am going to give you pertains to the type of game you may well be playing in most of the time. I am talking about a cash game where the money is deep in front of most of the players. This is the type of game most professional players are making a living at, and the type of game in which I usually earned my livelihood. Some of the other conditions I mentioned in the previous paragraph are conducive to playing a lot of hands, but a no-limit hold’em cash game is not the place for us ordinary mortals to be entering a lot of pots. A super player who reads opponents very well may be able to get away with entering a lot of pots, especially against weak competition, but that is not a style of play than any poker coach can teach or should be teaching.

Your opponents would prefer that you play more hands, just like a sniper prefers the enemy soldier to frequently stick his head up and look around. Your adversaries will try to talk you into loosening up. Remember that your interests are in direct conflict with their interests. Play the type of game that will earn you money, not the type that will earn you praise from your opponents.

Playing few hands will soon give you the reputation of being tight. However, most people equate tight with being afraid to put much money at risk without a big hand. When I encourage you to play few starting hands, the last thing I would advise you to do is to play tight at every stage of play. There is a huge difference in not getting too involved with constantly putting money into a small pot, hoping you will get lucky, and putting more money into a decent-sized pot that is already under way. In fact, sometimes the right poker play is to bet all your money on a hand even though you are hoping to win on a bluff or by hitting a draw. In other words, once you are in combat, you have to fight.

One of the nicest compliments I have ever received came from a fellow pro who said to me, “Bob, you win nearly every pot you enter. I think you have a higher percentage of hits for at-bats than anyone I know.” This is the type of play that can work for you, as well as for me. Once you are involved in a pot, try hard to win it. President Teddy Roosevelt had it right (though he was not talking about poker). He said, “speak softly, but carry a big stick.”

If you play few starting hands, you will be considered a tight player. This is nothing to cry about, it is something to exploit. If people think you nearly always have a hand when you are in the pot, most of them will prefer to stay out of your way, folding all but their premium hands. Obviously, to exploit this behavior, you are supposed to run a fair amount of bluffs, and bet your drawing hands strongly.

Having a number of your opponents thinking that you are reluctant to put money into the pot without holding a good hand will help you win pots that a loose player would not be able to win. Remember, no matter how tight you play, there will be plenty of occasions where you would like to be able to bet and have everyone fold. Even a good hold’em starting hand will fail to get help from the flop cards two out of every three times.

Even a tight player will raise on more hands than just the big pairs. Tight initial involvement, like I advocate, will mean you should be raising jacks in any position, tens and nines in middle position, and A-K and A-Q a majority of the time. Raise with a wide variety of hands on the cutoff and button, especially when no one is in yet. You will need to win some of these pots with a continuation bet and/or a turn bet, and having a tight image will help you to do so.

No matter what your image, you are going to encounter that breed of player known as a calling station. So, you are not supposed to try to run over every type of opponent. You can make a probe bet on nothing (or a draw of some type). But once you find out a calling station has some kind of hand, slow down. You may even wind up winning the pot after you back off and check, because a lot of these calling stations are also “checking stations,” frequently giving a free card because they are thinking only about getting one themselves.

Do not confuse a calling station with a lookup artist. The latter frequently calls once for small money to “see if you are serious.” He does this with a light hand, and can usually be persuaded to fold when you fire a solid barrel on the turn.

Whatever image you have, it will help you make money if that image does not match reality. While it is nice to have the opponents think you seldom have a real hand when you bet or raise, if your loose image has been earned by a lot of losing hands that you had to show down, your advertising budget was too large. On the other hand, if your image is that of a tight player who hates to put money into the pot, and it is earned by getting a terrible run of starting hands and having to fold, at least you did not have to pay any more than necessary to acquire it.

The recipe for successful no-limit hold’em is to play solid hands in position, but not be afraid to risk chips after the flop when there is money in the middle just sitting there. Use your tight image and put in a purchase offer. ♠

Bob Ciaffone has authored four poker books, Middle Limit Holdem Poker, Pot-limit and No-limit Poker, Improve Your Poker, and Omaha Poker. All can be ordered (autographed to you) from Bob by e-mail: [email protected]. Free U.S. shipping to Card Player readers. Ciaffone is available for poker lessons at a reasonable rate. His website is www.pokercoach.us, where you can get his rulebook, Robert’s Rules of Poker, for free. Bob also has a website called www.fairlawsonpoker.org.