TAG Poker Strategy

You may have heard the term “TAG” floating around in poker strategy circles. You might have seen some discussions of TAG poker strategy on internet forums. You’ve probably even come across some TAG players at the tables, though you may not have known that’s what they were at the time. TAG poker is everywhere, and in order to crush the games, you’ll need to know what it’s all about. It’s not a complicated concept, although some strategy “gurus” like to pretend it is. It’s just a simple playing style, based on two premises:

• Tight play increases hand value.
• Finely-tuned aggression wins pots.

That’s really all there is to it. TAG stands for “tight aggressive”, and the name itself pretty much sums up the strategy. There’s nothing elusive here—just an easy to implement, profitable way to play poker. Our TAG Poker guide will provide some more detailed information about the TAG poker playing style. For more detailed information on the different types of poker strategy styles read our guide on:

• Poker Player Types

TAG Poker Concept #1: Tight Play Increases Hand Value

Some time ago, poker theorists noticed something striking: most players play a lot of hands preflop. In a stroke of genius, some of these theorists came to the following conclusion: if we play tighter than our opponents, our hands will generally be stronger than theirs.

This was a simple but revolutionary discovery. Now it’s just common sense. When you adopt a TAG style of play, your edge comes largely from your hand’s showdown value. Since so many players are terrible preflop, this edge turns out to be significant, and a TAG style turns out to be very profitable.

If you’re adopting a TAG poker style, you’ll want to cut back on your marginal hands preflop. This means no more A-6 offsuit, 4-9 suited, K-2 offsuit, etc.. You want to cut the fat out of your range, so that you’re playing better hands than your opponent.

To illustrate how this works, imagine you’re at the tables holding AKo preflop. Everyone folds to you. You raise, and an opponent in the big blind calls. You know that your opponent plays a pretty wide range of hands. He could have almost anything. Thus in the long term, you can be sure your AK is +EV in this situation. You’ve already made money (long-term) just by raising it up. Which brings us to our next TAG concept: aggression.

TAG Poker Concept #2: Finely-Tuned Aggression Wins Pots

Aggression is the second key ingredient to successful TAG poker play. Aggression is important because, quite frankly, most players suck at using it. Donks—and even many grinders/pros—have no idea how to use aggression, or how to defend against it. Thus the TAG player who masters aggression gains a significant edge against the average player.

When playing TAG, you’ll be keeping a tight range preflop. You can be pretty confident that whenever you’ve got a good hand, you’ve got an edge in a situation. Thus you want to create value to back up your good hand. This is accomplished by building the pot, which in turn requires you to aggressively encourage action from your opponents.

TAG strategy dictates that you should always raise a hand you want to play preflop. Never limp, except in certain extraordinary situations (e.g. small pocket pairs in huge multi-way pots). The benefits of being aggressive with your preflop holdings are twofold. First, you’ll get value out of your strong hands. Second, acting aggressively establishes you as a “gatekeeper of action”, so to speak, in a hand. This allows you to control the flow of the game, and thus maximize your winnings while minimizing your losses.

Imagine you’ve got AQs on the button, in a pot with one limper behind you. You’ve got a strong hand, so you raise the action. Everyone folds, and the limper calls. Since he limped in early position, you can be pretty confident that he’s a bad player. Thus you can deduce that your hand is much stronger than his. That’s money in the bank.

The flop comes K-8-2 of your suit. Your opponent thinks you’re strong, since you bet, and so checks the action to you. You’ll usually take down the pot here with a simple continuation bet, even though you’ve not hit anything on the flop. Your preflop aggression cast a shadow of doubt in your opponent’s mind. Thus all you need to do is be consistent in your aggression, and you’ll convince him to fold.

This is the beauty of aggression in TAG play. Your opponents will have no idea of how to handle the postflop action. You can take down pots simply by continuation betting on the flop, after you’ve established yourself as the preflop aggressor. It’s a matter of psychology, and it’s a huge edge. Players simply can’t handle the heat. Those who can, will win.

• TAG Poker Strategy

• TAG Poker Guide

• Poker Player Types