No Limit Holdem 101: The Value of Aggression

This is intended to be a series of articles about playing on-line no limit holdem cash games. There will be times where I venture into live poker and times where I venture into SNGs, MTTs, Satellites, and games other than no limit holdem, but for the most part this will target no limit holdem cash games.

For the 10th installment of this series, I’ll talk about the value of aggression in poker.


If you look to all the top poker pros, you will see many different styles of play. You will see pros that will play virtually any hand (Gus Hanson) and pros that play many fewer hands (Phil Helmuth, Chris Ferguson).

But the one thing that all the top pros have in common is aggression. If they are involved in a hand, they are involved to win the hand and they will consistently do that by putting pressure on their opponents to make decisions.

Properly control and applied aggression has many advantages. And in poker, aggression means betting. If you are consistently betting, then you are consistently putting pressure on your opponents.

When you are aggressive with your betting you:
• Decrease the number of opponents – By betting you force players without hands and weaker players out of the hand.
• Increase the size of pot – By raising you are forcing your opponents to make a call that contributes chips to the pot.
• Give yourself more ways to win – You of course can win the pot by having the best hand at showdown. By raising you are also giving yourself the chance to win the pot without the best hand by convincing your opponent to fold.
• Allow yourself the chance to gain information – When your opponent calls you are gaining information about his hand. When you check, you are giving him free cards and getting no information.

Let me give you one quick example of pre-flop aggression. You are in the cutoff position with KJ(s). One early position player and one middle position player have limped into the pot. The action then comes to you. You decide that this is a perfect time to be aggressive since you are in late position and no one in front of you has shown any particular strength. You decide to bet 4 ½ times the big blind. All players fold and you profit 3 ½ big blinds for your aggressive play.

Let’s change up the scenario to give us one call. All the other action is the same, except the early position limper calls your raise. There are now 12 ½ big blinds in the pot. The flop is 3 low to middle non-connected unsuited cards. Your opponent checks to you and you bet out ½ the pot. Your opponent was playing a suited Ace and folds. You have now profited 8 big blinds for your aggressive play.

Pre-flop aggression can be simply defined as “no limpers allowed”. Post-flop aggression can be simply defined as “no free cards.”

As with any concept, aggression can be over done and turned into a disadvantage. If you always raise pre-flop and always raise post-flop, then your opponents will stop believing you have made a hand (after all no one hits all the time.) Conversely, if you seldom bet post-flop and suddenly bet out, your opponents will more easily fold giving you credit for a strong hand.

Establish the right balance of aggression and you will be giving yourself the opportunity to win more pots outright, and the chance to win bigger pots.
Well that’s it for our introduction to aggression. We will get much deeper into specific types of aggression (continuation betting, blind stealing, isolation raises, semi-bluffing, etc.) in future articles.

In the next two installments we will talk about starting hand selection – when should you be playing what cards and how to extract maximum value.