If your worried about losing too many chips being aggressive than you'll easily get pushed around.
Someone said its usually a bad idea countering aggression with aggression, ennnnh, I think this is 50/50 and I actually prefer countering with aggression. It definitely makes sense just to call when you have an aggressive maniac on your hands or you have the absolute nuts, but every aggressive player isn't a maniac. Most people are taught just to call the bully but sometimes this will get you in hot water, especially when your out of position. What will happen is that you will have an aggressive player on your hands that will sometimes take your checks for weakness and will fire 3 shells at you to test your courage.
Say for example you have ace jack and and aggressive player raises it up, the flop comes and you hit your ace and he fires a probing bet 3/4ths the pot and you call. 4th street comes and to you it seems a blank and he bets the pot, now your thinking your hand is good but your also thinking is my hand marginal, so when you call this bet your thinking to yourself I hope he checks on the river for a showdown, UNH UNH. River comes seemingly blank and you check and the aggressive player fires another shell, this time either its the same as the pot, or somewhat more than the pot, OR even all in which would seemingly be out of nowhere. Now your faced with a tough decision, you could have him beat, but than again he could have ak or aq, or he could have just been betting with a pocket pair and he could have hit on the flop turn or river for a set.
Now your playing for a big pot with a marginal hand and you have no clue where you stand in the hand because you never raised to see your opponents strength and since he was last to act he has the maximum opportunity to bluff you, but at the same time you dont know if he thought you were weak based on your checks or if he really has his hand.
I see this happen all the time, people calling bets thinking that the aggressor won't bet on the next street and each street they bet the person that check seems to become weaker and weaker. About 7/10 your going to end up laying your hand down, because your not confident or your going to be really beat because the aggressor's bets allowed him to fish for 2 streets after the flop and he very well could have caught 2 pair or even a set because of this.
Reasons like this is why I think its good to counter with aggression, because all in all you STILL HAVE TO PROTECT YOUR HAND, so I would raise on the flop and his following action may help you to determine what to do, he may reraise you then and there hinting for you to laydown or if you know him well you might know to come back over top all in over his reraise, most likely he's only gonna reraise with a premium hand and you'll get away from this hand with a smaller loss, he may have a pocket pair and didn't hit it on the flop and a raise could take the hand down there, he could even have suited connectors and hit one of his cards and a raise could also take it down, these two situations you wouldnt allow the aggressor to suckout on your hand by seeing more streets.
Sometimes its cool to call the aggressor, but sometimes you have to protect your hand no matter what he has and at the same time you need to find out where you stand in the hand and simply calling all the time could get you in big trouble if you don't have the absolute nuts. Even with the nuts you should raise, because the aggressor is capable of having anything and you don't want him to catch a flush on you cus when it comes what are you going to do with an overbet to the pot with your straight thats no longer good if he actually has the flush.
You have to know when its cool to check call an aggressor and when it isn't. Your reading skills have to be impeccable to come over top with complete garbage all in and if he calls you and wins than his confidence is going to boost and everyone else may become more confident when playing pots with you, and you definitely don't want that.
heres what it comes down to in a cash game, if your passive the following things will happen:
-you'll get your blinds stolen much more (you'll see alot less free blind play)
-you'll lose much more when you defend your blinds because you'll most likely end up laying down whatever cards you have to continuous aggressive bets
-MOST IMPORTANTLY, you'll have a hard time getting your monsters paid off because your play will look out of character, especially if you bet at the pot, red flags will go up in your opponents heads. (the point of being aggressive is getting your monsters paid off and picking up alot of small pots, therefore making up for all the chips you lose when you get called on bluffs)
-you'll lose a lot of hands to players that bet there draws when you really have the best hand with middle and bottom pair
-you will get bluff raised a lot more
