How aggressive should you be during the early stages of a tournament?

I mean I do play aggressive by analysing the situation but at some point I think that's okay but after that when I analyse my hand my thoughts process is that I should have not played that much aggressive at that point.

The question is quite vague. If you could provide more specific examples of aggression we could comment on it.

Aggressive poker is generally winning poker, especially when playing exploitatively at micro stakes. We just don't want to get reckless with our aggression. What does aggressive mean? it means that we bet more often and generally bet larger. If we are c-bet bluffing flops with a pot sizing with 100% frequency, say, that is careless aggression because it is a clear imbalance that even most fish can spot and use against us.

If we are jamming pre at stack depths of 50bb, 80bb, 100bb, that is careless aggression because we fold out almost all of our value and only risk getting caught by a prime hand, or caught by a lucky fish who hits the runout, and we felt early.

Also, if we pair our aggression up with loose ranges, this can also be careless. We want to be aggressive but we generally also want to stay tight.

It's exploitative poker. When we exploit, we have to spot an imbalance in Villain's play. Nits overfold and play too tight, so we exploit them by making them fold to our aggression. Calling stations call too much, too wide and are too passive, so we exploit them by playing tight for range advantage (we almost always have a stronger hand) and we aggressively value bet them when strong because they call too much. Maniacs are just way too wide, so we exploit them with range advantage of staying nice and tight and then calling them down when we are strong and they bet too large too wide. That is why tight and aggressive is the exploitative way.

It’s kind of a general question so my general answer, for myself and what I do in tournaments, I tend to play tight with your big starting stack. I use the first few rounds to see how my opponents are playing and use this time to start formulating plans against each one. It’s ok to be aggressive when in a hand, that’s mostly never a bad thing.

Robert12_12 said:

I mean I do play aggressive by analysing the situation but at some point I think that's okay but after that when I analyse my hand my thoughts process is that I should have not played that much aggressive at that point.

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I think the point you are making is that you play agg then at showdown realize that you had not properly ranged your Villain so that they had enough folds in that range to fold to your agg..
Post-flop player reads and board range refinement are very important for LAG play. That is your study point.

As long as I have more than 30 BBs I play the same as I would in a cash game, just normal tight-aggressive poker. As the blinds rise you really have no choice but to get more aggressive.












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You must keep the same game for most of the tournament

At the start of the tournament I prefer to play tighter and wait for aggressive players to fall. I can usually double up at some good times.

Be selectively aggressive early in tournaments. Play more hands in position, pressure weaker players, and build your stack, but avoid unnecessary big pots with marginal hands. The goal is to accumulate chips while minimizing unnecessary risk.

It depends on the situation. It's foolish to go into a hand thinking about one extreme or the other until you see what your tablemates are doing, what their strategy is, and where you stand relative to them. There are usually a few players you'll want to exploit and quickly adjust your strategy to counter them.

Robert12_12 said:

I mean I do play aggressive by analysing the situation but at some point I think that's okay but after that when I analyse my hand my thoughts process is that I should have not played that much aggressive at that point.

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It all depends on the tournament. They are different. Hyper, turbo, slow. Generally speaking, aggressive play takes experience and skills. If you lack one or the other, your aggressive play will only lead to losses.

MishkaZL said:

It all depends on the tournament. They are different. Hyper, turbo, slow. Generally speaking, aggressive play takes experience and skills. If you lack one or the other, your aggressive play will only lead to losses.

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Passive play requires even more expertise or it will lose even more, certainly more consistent losses. The better approach for inexperienced players is to not err on the side of passiveness but instead to remain aggressive and err on the side of tightness, since stronger cards are easier to play post-flop.

In the early stage of a tournament, we are just trying to accumulate chips, and outlasting other players do not yet have significant value. So the best strategy early in a tournament is to play the same way, you would play in a cash game. The main difference is, most tournaments play with an ante, and most cash games do not.

If there is an ante, we need to play more hands (looser), because there is more chips to content for, at it cost us to much, if we constantly sit there and fold while still paying not only the blinds but also the ante. The other difference to a cash game is, that except for the first few blind levels, stacks will tend to get shorter like maybe 40-60BB rather than 100-200BB. This widen our stack-off range and change the value of different hand types.

As for aggression this term is often a bit misunderstood. The aggression factor is the ratio between bet and raises to calls. If this factor is two, we are betting or raising twice as often, as we are calling. This is considered a neutral number, because when facing a bet we should sometimes fold. So if we and our opponents bet or raise at the same frequency, and we fold half the time, we end up with an aggression factor of 2. However folding is not passive but neutral. So we can also have a high aggression factor or aggressive playing style by rarely calling.

So is it possible to be to aggressive then? Absolutely yes. If we only continue, when our hand is strong enough to raise, thats definitely not optimal. We do want to have calling as one of our tools, we just dont want to call to much. Like regularly calling all the way down with bottom pair, as we see fish do. However most likely OP is considering, weather he bet or raise to much. And this could certainly also be possible.

If there are many multiway pots, we do not want to try to win all of those by relentlessly betting into several people with air. If we missed the board, chances are, someone else hit it and will not fold. So in these situations it will generally be better to take neutral actions by checking and folding. We can also be to aggressive by betting for value with a hand, that is to in between to get called by worse.

Like maybe betting flop, turn and river with second pair. Here we should also take a neutral action by checking at least one street to not value own ourselfes, but unlike the other situation our goal is to get to showdown. So maybe we bet flop (aggressive), check back turn (neutral) and then call a bet on the river (passive) and win at showdown against a busted draw.

Robert12_12 said:

but after that when I analyse my hand my thoughts process is that I should have not played that much aggressive at that point.

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If you analyse your own hands, then why not take it a step further and post some of them in the hand analysis section? Then you can get feedback from others about, if you actually took a line, which was to aggressive.

fundiver199 said:

As for aggression this term is often a bit misunderstood.

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It is most often understood. Countless times I have discussed strategy with people who tell me that I'm loose and I realize that they are labelling me as loose simply because I tend to bet aggressively.

Loose and tight refers to RANGES.

Aggressive and passive is a totally separate thing. They refer to frequencies of ACTIONS, BETTING and SIZING.

Good story. I'm at the table and I'm playing tight and aggressive as usual. I don't remember the exact hand but I opened strong, got called, hit the flop and lost a big pot when Villain hit the run out. Then someone who had folded pre, a player that I had notes on as a chronic limp-caller pipes up in chat saying, "Serves you right for playing so loose." I had myself a chuckle, then corrected her, "I'm actually the tightest player at the table. What you mean is I'm aggressive.". That put her into a hissy fit, hah.

Of course, why was she upset? Because she was doing what the majority of fish do: trying to see as many flops as possible as cheaply as possible, and I wasn't letting her do that whenever I had good cards. What I didn't tell her was that I was 99% positive that I was the only player at the table willing to fold A-rag under the gun. This snarky fish had no idea how tight I was and how horrendously loose she was. ; )

Here's another story. Forum hand review. Guy crows about a big pot he won. He flat called behind with A9s, flopped flush draw paired board, got stacked on the turn, called it off with 9 outs, was behind a pocket pair for 2-pair, the river double paired the board, counterfeited Villain and his A-high kicked. I told him how super lucky he was. He got upset with me and continued to strut about how smart he was. Then he started taking shots at my playing style and called me wild loose borderline maniac with all of my betting. The trouble is that he has only ever been at a table with me once. All he knows about my style is the odd hand example. He has NO CLUE what my frequencies are. So he has no idea what my 'style' is. But I actually do remember that one time at the table with him and I KNOW his passive tendencies AND how he overvalued any 2 suited cards, hah! So he starts telling me to stop critiquing him and that his 'style of play' is just a choice as if it is just as valid as any other style. The truth is that he can call it a style all that he wants, but he's still playing like a fish by calling calling calling wide and with any value or equity at all. Good 'style', bro. Stick with it. 👍

eetenor said:

I think the point you are making is that you play agg then at showdown realize that you had not properly ranged your Villain so that they had enough folds in that range to fold to your agg..
Post-flop player reads and board range refinement are very important for LAG play. That is your study point.

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Yeah, I think that's exactly what happens sometimes. I can recognize a good spot to be aggressive, but I don't always adjust my aggression enough after the flop based on the range I think my opponent actually has. Looking back at the hand, I often realize I was thinking more about my own line than whether my opponent had enough hands that could realistically fold. I think improving my post-flop range assessment is probably the biggest thing I need to work on.

fundiver199 said:

If you analyse your own hands, then why not take it a step further and post some of them in the hand analysis section? Then you can get feedback from others about, if you actually took a line, which was to aggressive.

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Yeah, I think that’s a good idea. Sometimes when I review my own hands, I can identify that I was too aggressive, but I’m not always sure whether my conclusion is correct or if I’m being results-oriented. Posting those hands in the hand analysis section would give me a chance to get different perspectives and understand whether the aggression was actually a mistake or just an unfortunate result. I’ll definitely try doing that more often.

Rmi said:

You must keep the same game for most of the tournament

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This isn't true at all.
There are strategies for short,medium and big stacks.
It's simply impossible to play as a bigstack is supposed to play when in reality you have a shortstack.

Same strategy regardless of chipstack is a recipe for desaster

i think every situation is different... you have to judge the table you are at and go from there.

Bluffing timings properly

How aggressive should you be during the early stages of a tournament?

That's always a good and interesting question as we're on the number 1 online poker community we all know that the default approach we should have in poker is to be aggressive, try to always have the initiative and control how the hand is played... the rest is to figure out 'the balance' and here comes the tricky part and why poker is such a complex game - we need to factor in so many things: type of opponent/s, stack sizes, what stake we play, the flow of the game so far... also, I'm OK with losing hands where I was overly aggressive compared to losing hands at showdown because I was 'afraid' and missed a good spot to bluff or won a smaller pot because I didn't go for thin value* nowadays, this can make the difference between you being a winning/losing player... about the early stages of MTTs - I always remember Daniel Negreanu's quote you can't win a tournament in the early stages, but you can lose it - so, even though I always try to play an aggressive style (for the past 2-3 years I tried my best to switch my game from TAG to LAG... nit game is over and I always hated being a folding machine lol), I still try to pick my opponents/spots wisely and not just throw my stack away...

MishkaZL said:

It all depends on the tournament. They are different. Hyper, turbo, slow. Generally speaking, aggressive play takes experience and skills. If you lack one or the other, your aggressive play will only lead to losses.

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I agree with that. I think aggression is much more effective when you understand why you're applying the pressure rather than just being aggressive for the sake of it. I've noticed that sometimes I recognize a good opportunity to attack, but in hindsight I realize I didn't have enough information about Villain's range to justify continuing the aggression. I guess knowing when to slow down is just as important as knowing when to apply pressure

Robert12_12 said:

I agree with that. I think aggression is much more effective when you understand why you're applying the pressure rather than just being aggressive for the sake of it.

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ANY line or strategy is much more effective when you understand what you are doing and why.