At a certain stage of her poker career, every player has to decide what type of player she’s going to be – strong or loose, weak or tight, passive or aggressive. Since it’s not always easy to know what kind of player you are, let alone what kind you’d like to become, I’ve devised a simple one-question pop quiz that will help you find your type. Ready? Here goes:

 You’re playing no-limit Texas hold’em and you are dealt 8-7 suited in early position. With this hand, do you fold, call, raise a little, or raise all-in?

If you fold, you're an appropriately tight hold'em player who knows enough to fold trash hands. If you call, you're too loose and (for reasons we'll discuss momentarily) probably doomed. If you raise a little, you're a strong player with an eye toward taking over the table. If you raise all-in, you're a kamikaze pilot with an eye on an enemy warship.

Let's break it down.

The player who folds 8-7 suited early is a typically Kosher player, given to waiting for good cards and to playing them the way good cards are meant to be played. If she's up against the right sort of (dim bulb) opponents, her style will serve her well. She will only bet when she has the best of it, yet her weak, loose opponents will pay her off. Even today, when many people have gotten very good at playing hold’em, this style of play can still be rewarding. We can call it a “get the goods, bet the goods” modus operandi, and in any situation where your foes are worse than you, it offers the promise of continual small profits without a lot of variance or risk.

The player who calls with 8-7 suited is a Sunny Jim, an optimist of a certain stripe. His cherished notion of the immediate future features many people flat-calling behind him before the flop, and then a flop that hits his hand hard, either with two pair, trips, a straight draw or flush draw or – 118-1 shot against – a made flush. Since reality has a way of disabusing us of our cherished notions, it's much more likely that someone will raise behind him, he'll make another loose call, then miss the flop completely and have to muck his hand (or, worse, hit the flop a little and call off even more chips). If this pattern repeats itself frequently enough, sunny Jim must inevitably go broke. We hope you’re not this sort of player. We’d hate to see you lose all your chips.

The player who raises a little with 8-7 suited (let's say three times the size of the big blind) is a Ms. Frisky, an aggressive type who doesn't mind some risk in service of her greater goal, that of taking over the game. The 8-7 suited she plays out of position is one of the few substandard hands she mixes in among her otherwise strong starts because it offers two types of powerful deception. First, it keeps foes from being certain that every time she raises in early position she has a real hand. Second, a flop that hits this hand is unlikely to hit most callers' hands and also unlikely to be read for the monster it is. Her raise also serves the purpose of thinning the field, either winning her the pot right there or getting her into a heads-up situation – never a bad thing. Assuming Ms. Frisky can get away from the hand when she misses, she's well positioned to profit, and possibly profit big. If you’re going down this road – it’s the road I recommend – make sure that you can, in fact, get away from sticky situations. Know your pot odds. Know when you have the right price to play your draws. And know your foes. 8-7 isn’t that much of a hand; there are a lot of better ones out there, so if you don’t hit the flop hard, you’re pretty much done with the hand – unless you can bluff your way through it, but that’s a discussion for another time.

The player who goes all-in with 8-7 suited can count on one of two things: Either he'll win a little or he'll lose a lot. Unless his opponents are as whacked out as he is, no one with a second-rate hand will give him action, and the only time he'll get called is when he's badly dominated by the type of holding that can call an all-in bet, namely a big pocket pair. In such circumstances (8-7 suited versus, say, K-K), our little seppuku warrior will lose his whole stack almost eight times out of 10. His long term prospects? Not too damn good. Of this strategy – the grandstand overbet – it’s often said that, “It works every time – until it doesn’t.” Really, if you’re going to play poker that way, you might as well play keno.

 So now we have four types of no limit hold'em players, Kosher, Sunny Jim, Ms. Frisky, and Seppuku Warrior. Of these four types, two look to be net-plus players and two look to be net-minus. Do you know which? Yes, that’s right: kosher and Ms. Frisky. Now the question is: which kind of player do you want to be? Because you have a choice, you know. You can play fast or slow, loose or tight. You can dream of miracle flops or you can sensibly plan to play deceptive holdings strongly. I’m going to credit you with not being a seppuku warrior; there are really very few of them out there – genuine maniacs who will stack off at the drop of a hint. However, there are far too many Sunny Jims in this world, and if that’s the type you are now, I suggest you plan to make a change. In the modern world of hold’em, you can survive playing tight, and you can thrive playing strong, but you can’t succeed at all playing weak-loose.

Therefore as you set out to adopt a style for yourself, you simply need to ask yourself how much risk you want. If you like a taut, tidy little hold'em game, you can do quite well with the kosher approach. Simple wait for quality cards and then bet ‘em like you got ‘em. In this case, your most important consideration will be game selection. You need a nice, loose game where your many foes will pay you off when you hit. If you find such favorable circumstances, then just playing slightly tighter than the table will be your recipe for success.

But if you’ll take my advice, you’ll set your cap on being a Ms. Frisky, because that’s where real success in poker lies. I'm not saying you should start raising willy-nilly with every middle suited connector that comes your way; playing “speculative” hands like this is “a powerful force that can only be used for good or for evil.” But it's a goal you can set: to be the straw that stirs the drink every time you sit down to play. You need only look at the strong, aggressive players you play against to see how formidable they are. Sure, they have their ups and downs, but they're the only ones who can look forward to big ups time and time again. And if you doubt me, just ask yourself which kinds of opponents give you the most trouble. Not the tight ones, not the loose ones, and not the maniacs. No, it’s the strong, aggressive, tricky players who give us such fits. So, really, if you can’t beat ‘em, why not join ‘em?

You can practice, you know. Next time you play poker, set yourself the task of raising with middle suited connectors out of position. You’ll be amazed at all the good things that start to happen when you jack up your aggressiveness. You stop being just another player in the game and start being the player that everyone fears.

And if they fear you, they probably can’t beat you.