Yesterday I hinted at loose aggressive poker players having a healthy relationship with money. Your first step in becoming a loose aggressive poker player is being able to let go of your cash. Once you deposit, put it on the table, whatever your cash is gone. All you have are chips, and your goal is to accumulate more chips through deception, aggression, reading your opponents, and becoming the table aggressor.

After you have the money situation figured out it’s time to start learning some poker theory. The most important lesson you can learn is related to probability. What is the probability that your opponent will call your bet on the flop? For very tight players that number is somewhere between 10-15%. For a loose player the number is somewhere around 30%. So if you’re up against a tight player he will be folding somewhere between 4 out of every 5 or 9 out of every 10 hands when he doesn’t lead right out and bet. In certain cases that bet is simply a continuation bet. Typically if there are no face cards on the board when a tight player has raised he (more than likely) has nothing more than ace or king high. A re-raise of his continuation bet may be enough to push him off the hand.

As for the loose players you’re looking at somewhere around him folding 7 out of every 10 hands. Again, you’ll want to look at the board and previous betting patterns to establish a base line on whether your opponent is in the 7 out of 10 range or the 3 out of 10 range. This is where the loose aggressive player really shines through, in his ability to read his opponents and know when to bet and when to slow down.

Being that the probability of your opponents folding to any bet is typically high, pots go to the aggressor. It doesn’t really matter what you’re holding, all that matters is that your opponent isn’t holding anything himself. Being able to differentiate when he is and when he isn’t can make a world of difference on which pots you bet and which ones you don’t.

In live poker this is a much easier task to accomplish than online. Live you have facial tics, speech patterns, players looking at their chips, shifting about in their chairs, or possible hand shaking. Online the only real tell you have to go off of is the betting pattern. This may not be a bad thing, however, as you can translate betting patterns into live play to get a decent read on what your opponents are doing. Combined with other live tells you’ll be able to read your opponents like an open book.

Establishing betting patterns and hand ranges takes some time to master. It usually accompanies looking through previous hand histories to see how a player plays a certain hand depending on what he’s going for. Note taking also helps you keep track of what has happened previously. Those notes can help tell you when to bet and when to slow down. Combine all that information together and you can pretty much play whatever hand you want when the situation presents itself.