TAG (Tight-Aggressive)
Tight-aggressive: the default winning style — play few hands, but play them hard.
A TAG enters about 15–20% of pots live, almost always with a raise, and keeps betting after the flop when they connect or when the board favours their range. It's the style nearly every winning low-stakes player starts with, because it sidesteps the two ways beginners lose: playing trash, and playing passively.
Why it works: tightness means your range is stronger than the field's, so your value bets get called by worse. Aggression means you win pots two ways — at showdown, or when everyone folds to your pressure. A TAG who opens A-Q suited to $8 at $1/$2, gets one caller, and bets $12 into $19 on a K-7-2 flop wins that pot most of the time without a pair, because the caller's range is full of hands that missed and fold.
The TAG's failure modes are drifting into nit territory — folding so much that nobody pays your value bets — and never adapting when the table is soft. If five players see every flop at your home game, carefully balanced c-bets lose value; bet bigger with your good hands and bluff less. Style is a starting point, not a religion.
If you don't know what your own style is, TAG is the right default: play the top 15% of hands, raise when you enter, bet when you connect, fold when the quiet ones raise you. Once your tracked results show you beating the game, you can widen out toward LAG territory — with the bankroll to survive the extra swings that come with it. Review your tracked hands every month: if the share of pots you're entering drifts above 25% or below 10%, you've quietly stopped being a TAG — adjust deliberately rather than drifting there by accident.