Tight-aggressive poker refers to a style of playing poker that is characterized by low flop percentages and aggressive betting.

Tight poker play: You are a tight player if you fold when common-sense poker strategies prescribe that you should.  Most of the time, you wait to see the flop only if your starting hands are good or strong; otherwise, you fold before the flop.  For instance, if you get pocket cards of 4h and a 3c, a tight poker player is not going to wait around for the flop.  He will fold his cards and wait for the next hand.  More often than not, a tight player also folds with trouble starting hands say, a King and a Ten or an Ace and a Ten.

Tight play does not only apply pre-flop.  If, after the flop, the tight player sees that his odds of winning have declined, he is likely to fold.  Put simply, a tight player generally plays hands that give him good odds; otherwise, he folds.

Aggressive poker play: An aggressive poker player, on the other hand, is one that bets aggressively when he decides to play.  He is characterized by frequent betting, raising and re-raising.  He is not fond of checking, limping in or calling down other players; he leads the betting as often as he can.

From the above descriptions, a tight-aggressive poker player plays good hands or is carefully selective about the hands he plays – but when he does decide to play a hand, he plays it aggressively and plays to win.

Why Play Tight-Aggressive Poker

There are other poker playing styles.  The opposite of tight poker play is loose poker play.  Loose poker players try to see as many flops as they can (and follows the same mode at the turn and the river) whether they have good or bad starting hands.  The opposite of aggressive poker play, on the other hand, is passive poker play.  A passive poker player typically follows the other players’ lead during betting rounds.  His favorite action is calling and checking.  In poker, therefore, a poker player can be tight-aggressive, tight-passive, loose-aggressive and loose-passive.  Why then should you become a tight-aggressive poker?

Tight play means an efficient use of your chips.  You won’t waste your chips on bad hands and not get penalized for playing speculative hands.  Tight playing gives you a clear guideline to follow:  you play when you have good hands, you fold when you have bad hands.

Aggressive playing, on the other hand, lets you protect your good hands.  Frequent betting and re-raising raises the cost of speculation; as more players drop out of the betting, the bigger your chances of winning can become.