Showing aggression before the flop can be a tricky poker skill to learn.  Everyone is different in their style of play, you will develop your particular poker style as you progress.  And remember no-one is ever too experienced or too good to learn more about poker!  As you develop your style of poker or the way you play, you will learn to use different amounts of aggressive tactics at different times during the game.

On one side, you have an ultra aggressive player like Tom Dwan, who often raises before the flop, sometimes even with nothing in his hand, just to test the players and maybe hope he will get lucky on the flop.  Sometimes this will pay off and sometimes you gonna burn… thats poker!  Sometimes you will just scare everyone off and only collect that blinds… if that is what you want…

Then you have more cautious, tight players like Howard Lederer or Daniel Negreanu who may be a little more careful pre-flop, depending on their starting hand and depending on whether they want to force the play a bit, mix it up, stir the pot…

Showing aggression before the flop can pay off, but it can also backfire on you and cost you, especially if you get unlucky with the community cards and someone else at the poker table gets lucky… once again thats the fun of poker!

The problem with pre-flop agression, is that you commit yourself and you commit chips to the pot.  It is usually better to keep raising and playing aggressively, once you make the decision to make an aggressive move.  If you get caught in two minds, players will pick up on your indecision and punish you.

Another good guide to poker aggression is to always think what hands, players may have and what hands players may think you have.  Look at the board and think of all the possibile hands, then choose the most probable hands… once again poker odds and probabilities come into the game… you have to know them by heart.

Its no good being aggressive when someone is sitting there with a nut hand and they know they have the nuts!  They will be only too happy for you to throw in more chips and collect them from you.

Tight aggressive poker is the way to go.  Use your aggression in a controlled clever way, dont over do it.