Marcus Bateman / Marcus Bateman / 28 October 2009 / Leave a comment

Many more players are now playing a loose aggressive style than when I first started playing poker. The combination of lots of the very top players in the game exhibiting master classes in this style on TV, and the general excitement and diversity of situation that playing loose brings, have led a lot more players to adopt this as their chosen style.

Playing the loose aggressive style can be one of the most fun in poker. It's combination of action and excitement can make your time at the tables much more interesting and profitable.

Although many adjustments have to be made in how you play hands in the actual game itself when playing loose, one thing that many players do not seem to realise is that playing looser changes your bankroll management rules considerably.

The key problem with playing loose is that the swings in poker are much greater than if you are playing tight. You have to both bet and call with much weaker hands in many more spots than if you are playing tight, and this makes the ups and downs much more severe. As the whole point of bankroll management is to provide a functioning cushion against these fluctuations, it follows that any playing style that increases the swings requires an increase in the cushion size in order to avoid going broke.

One of the interesting features of poker is that no matter how good at the actual game you are, if you do not follow adequate rules of bankroll management you will always end up broke. The luck is too extreme in the game, and no player can avoid the big swings that any playing style in poker brings.

As a rough guide to the numbers I use in bankroll management, as a full time pro with no source of income playing tight I would want around forty five buy ins to no limit hold'em cash game, with around sixty if I was playing a very loose style. For limit games playing tight I would want around five hundred and fifty big bets, with a number more like seven hundred if I was very loose. If you have other sources of income and are willing to add more money when things go very bad these figures can obviously be reduced by a decent margin.

Playing the loose aggressive style can be one of the most fun in poker. It's combination of action and excitement can make your time at the tables much more interesting and profitable. Make sure that you have an adequate cushion for the swings though, if you have been playing a tighter style and are starting to play looser and looser you need to be prepared to weather much harsher ups and downs.

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