I once raised with 2-2 on the button in a six handed online poker game after there had been a limper. Both blinds folded and they thought a while and called. The flop came A-J-6, they checked and I bet and their fold was so instant that they had obviously already clicked the “fold to a bet” button……they had given up because they failed to connect with the flop.

Then you get the type of player who KNOWS that you are being out of line but is too timid to do anything about it without some kind of a hand. It staggers me at times just how many bets I get away with in certain poker games…..all because I summoned up the courage to bet! There is no rocket science to it, people are making poker far more complex than what it should be and is why many people overestimate the importance of odds and mathematics in the game.

If there are players out there who find you out and have the guts to do something about it then so what!!! AVOID THEM AND PICK ON SOMEONE ELSE! Do you seriously think that a top player stops being aggressive simply because he gets played back at once or twice. Aggression can get you an awful long way in NL hold’em. It is different in games like limit poker, aggression is still important in limit but that game is far more mathematical and odds orientated and is in fact a far more difficult game to master in many respects.

If you were to look at the chip totals of a really great tournament poker player like Daniel Negreanu for instance at various stages of the tournament, you will notice one very important thing. That is his chip stack is undergoing some very violent fluctuations. It is doing this simply because of how many pots he is in and how aggressive he is. Sure…he may get blown out of the tournament playing this way but he isn’t known as one of the very best players in the world for nothing.

I know that we are talking about tournament poker here but you need to be aggressive in ALL forms of poker. Of course success in poker is not JUST about being aggressive because any fool can be aggressive. But you would be amazed just how much more successful as a player you would become if you simply injected more aggression at selected moments into your game

Another crucial factor with betting and aggression is that even when certain players know what you are up to and start to combat it, through lack of skill many will INCORRECTLY combat what you are doing. Like re-raising all in with 6-6 on the one hand when you just happen to be sitting there with A-A, that has happened to me many times. You will find that betting and raising aggressively will prevent you from losing money in pots where no showdown is seen as this is a terrible leak in the games of novice poker players.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson