All the Texas Holdem strategies in the world won’t help a player who doesn’t understand the first thing about bankroll management. Understanding how to manage your finances both at the table and away from the table will determine how well you can build up your own bankroll. Out of the four table personas one can dawn, the loose aggressive player requires the most expertise in bankroll management, opponent reading, and planned aggression. Let’s get to it.

In terms of bankroll management you first need to have your finances squared away before sitting at the table. If you expect to do away with the bill collectors by having a few lucky nights at the table playing loose aggressive poker, I’m sorry it’s never going to happen. The fear of not winning will be too great for you to make the correct plays at the right time. Your mind has to be clear and your relationship with money has to be pure as well. Once you sit down at the table you have to have zero reservations about going broke. 20 times the buy in for cash games and 50 times the buy in for tournaments should pretty much cover it. You’ll need to put down a lot of chips too when you sit down, no short stacking allowed if you want to comfortably play loose. Playing loose aggressive requires you to bluff, steal blinds, and run over the table with, what appears to the rest of the table anyway, reckless abandon.

Now you’ll need to understand the concept of table personas and putting your opponents on ranges to be able to identify which spots your bets will work and which spots you need to slow down. There are a total of 4 basic table personas – the tight passive, tight aggressive, loose passive, and loose aggressive. From there you can break them down into various sub categories but this should be enough to get you started. Once you’ve identified each players type at the table it’s time to start putting them on hand ranges. Tight players will typically stick to premium hands unless they’re in the blinds. Loose players will open up their range more, but depending on the type of loose player this range will vary. Once you can spot their range you can determine whether or not a bet on the flop will produce a fold, call, or raise out of your opponent. If you know they’ll call or fold then you are making a wise play. If you know they’ll raise its best just to save your chips.

When you know your opponents are going to call, you need to be planning your next move. Re-evaluate what they may possibly be holding before firing another barrel into the pot. If you put them on a draw, force them off it. If you put them on a strong hand where they’re attempting to smooth call you to set you up for their own move, slow down. Loose aggressive players have to think a few moves ahead of their opponents and see what their opponents are going to do before they even do it.

Holdem strategy is all about knowing what your opponents will do before they actually do it. You don’t want to bet heavily into a pot against an opponent who isn’t going to back down, but you do want to force opponents off hands where they’ve made top pair with a weak kicker, middle pair hoping to draw out to two pair, or players chasing after straight and flush draws. Some players don’t back down until the river, some back down on the flop. By identifying when each player typically folds their hand you have a better shot at picking up additional chips for your stack.

Playing loose aggressive poker takes a lot of focus and willpower. If you slow down you surrender your position as table captain. Once that’s gone it becomes much harder to regain it. If someone else comes along and takes your position as table captain away from you, its best to move on to another table. Your chip stack will thank you for it later.