The Second Part of the 'Aggressive' Truism

Hi. Come on in. You'll need your bib today. I've made sloppy Joes, with the accent on "sloppy." Dig in. We'll speak of our beloved game while we huddle here in a dark corner of your poker mind.

I have a question. It's almost like a puzzle. What happened to them? Where did they go? I don't see them around anymore.

I've been with Card Player since the first issue, and for every issue since. I've seen lots of players come and go in my 23 years of living in Las Vegas. The Friday night poker champs and the hotshot hustlers with their computer printouts arrive daily, here and in other areas of the country, ready to flatten the poker world with their studied play. Some survive and stay to play for a long time. Others start out winning as if every day was free-money day, but soon they go broke and are gone. What happened?

For many of them, "aggressiveness" happened. They came upon the general poker truth that aggressive poker is winning poker. Good. But they forgot, or never learned, the second part of that truth – when you are getting cards somewhere around probability. So, they blow into town, hit a run of cards, play aggressively, and win an acre of money.

Then, one day, the deck turns and the cards come well below probability. They keep playing that same aggressive game, but now it's costing them a lot of money. They don't understand it. They never learned to back off – to change gears. They keep rammin' and jammin' and getting more mystified. They're playing the same way, so why aren't they getting the same results?

Yes, playing poker in an aggressive manner is the way to go, if you have something with which to be aggressive. But if you try to consistently run over a game of limit poker without something with which to run, you'll soon be running with your tail between your legs. And that is a poker truth that has sent many a poker hustler back to Somewhere, U.S.A.

Aggressiveness by itself is not enough to make you a consistent winner. You can't run over a game of limit poker for more than a short while with garbage cards. You must show down a hand the majority of times. The days are gone in public poker when you could bully a game for any length of time. There are now too many players who will very quickly realize what you're up to and will just as quickly take advantage.

Aggressiveness is the major part of many players strategy, whether they have cards or not. So, when the cards go, their strategy is gone. These players will tend to win a lot when they do win, but will also tend to lose it all when they do lose.

If these players (and maybe you) could learn to change gears at the appropriate times, they would have a nice positive cash flow. The name players (and the no-names) who have been around a long time know this. They've been through it and survived.

Because limit poker players don't have the power of the big bet, limit poker has been called "the great equalizer." You can't call $30 and raise $300 – or $3,000. Many no-limit players have problems when they play limit poker, because they can't bully the game. They can put in only one more bet, and opponents can much more easily call them down with a medium-value hand for that one bet.

You don't need a big edge to play aggressively, you just need an edge. There are too many of us looking for the stone-cold filberts, rather than all the little edges we can find. Little edges with aggressive play will make you a consistent winner. But if you continue to play aggressively when the edges aren't there, you will lose.

And that's why you don't see them around anymore.

You need more than a bib. You need a shower, but not here; head on home. And kill the light on your way out.

Editor's note: Roy West, author of the bestseller 7 Card Stud, the Complete Course in Winning (available from Card Player), continues to give his successful poker lessons in Las Vegas to both tourists and locals. Ladies are welcome. Call 1-800-548-6177, Ext. 03.