Passive Aggressive Poker Strategy
I help you categorize your opponents into their respective player types based on stats and tendencies. I also give some easy-to-use exploits against each.
Dealing with a highly aggressive poker player on your left is never an easy thing to handle. In fact it just plain sucks no matter how you cut it. The is a lot of advanced poker theory these days like The Upswing Poker Lab for example which talk about how to balance your ranges and play GTO in a spot like this. The concept of a tight-aggressive poker strategy is simple: play very few hands, but play them aggressively. TAG poker worked like magic 10 years ago, when fishy players with loose pre-flop tendencies were a dime a dozen. Heck, even Mike McDermott recommended it to the professor in Rounders (1998).
Listen to this podcast episode #289:
You MUST Understand Player Types
“The money available to a player winning long term comes from other players’ willingness to put money into the pot with bad hands that a perfect player would not play.”
– Ed Miller in his incredible book, The Course
This is exactly why we must understand player types and assign each of our opponents to one of them.
When you’re profiling your opponents, you’re looking for weaknesses. When you see those weaknesses, you know exactly how to play against them to earn their chips. You can also selectively target the weakest players who are most likely to give you their chips.
“Attack weakness, avoid strength.”
– Ed Miller in his incredible book, The Course
You’re looking to play more hands versus weak players and avoid hands versus strong players. Battling good players can kill your profits. We’re all playing this game, at least in part, to make money. Since it’s easier to make money versus the weak, that is who you MUST go after. The key to going after them is to understand and spot each of the weak players around the table.
You must become an active observer when you’re not involved in the hand:
- If a player just open-raised from the Hijack, and it’s the first hand he’s played in 3 orbits, he’s likely a tight player who only plays the best hands.
- Maybe another player makes her 4th limp in a row… she’s likely a Fish.
- Now a different player 3bets then triple-barrels down the streets with J8s after flopping TP. Wow! You found a loose and aggressive player.
Because you’re paying attention, you’re able to categorize each of these players and now you can use some basic exploits against each.
The 4 Common Poker Player Types
We use two different tendencies to put players into one of the 4 player types.
Tight versus Loose
A tight player plays few hands (VPIP < 20%), and a loose player plays a lot of hands (VPIP > 20%). 20% VPIP is just the cutoff percentage. Of course, players can be ultra-tight at 5% or ultra-loose at 95%.
Passive versus Aggressive
A passive player doesn’t raise preflop that often (PFR < 15%) and an aggressive player raises a lot (PFR > 15%). Again, 15% is just the cutoff with the ultra-passive player having a PFR of 1% and the mega-aggressive player at 45%.
Loose-Passive
LOOSE = Plays lots of hands; PASSIVE = prefer making checks and call; they love to see flops; they stay in way too long with weak hands and draws; #1 targets at the table; if they raise post-flop, WATCH OUT!
AKA: Fish or Calling Stations
Common VPIP/PFR Stats: 22/6, 28/5, 45/9 (Mention video in show notes detailing VPIP & PFR)
Color Coding: Green
Characteristic #1: Passively plays very wide & weak ranges. Not positionally aware.
Exploit: Play ranges that dominate theirs and isolate them (as limpers or in the blinds) whenever +EV.
Characteristics #2: Generally losing players.
Exploit: Target them and play as many hands as possible in +EV spots!
Loose-Aggressive
LOOSE = Plays lots of hands, AGGRESSIVE = prefers bets and raises; can be a high variance loser; they use the power of position yet they might not be that positionally aware when it comes to starting hands; capable of spewing chips in bad bluffing spots.
AKA: LAG, Donk or Maniac
Common VPIP/PFR Stats: 24/18, 36/24, 55/35
Color Coding: Orange
Characteristic #1: Too much aggression with weak ranges. Open-raises, iso-raises and calls too much preflop.
Exploit: Play with hands at the top of their range, and strive for IP play.
Characteristic #2: Constantly applies pressure.
Exploit: ALWAYS gauge how well the board interacts with their range. Be willing to call wider with 2nd and 3rd pair when they can be bluffing worse.
Tight-Passive
TIGHT = Plays mostly strong hands, PASSIVE = prefer checks and calls (but sometimes they’re aggressive with few calling hands); quick to fold post-flop; beware their bets and raises.
AKA: TP, Rock or Nit
Common VPIP/PFR Stats: 11/9, 11/2, 7/3
Color Coding: Red
Characteristic #1: Strong hand selection & positionally aware. Folds too often preflop and raises only strong hands.
Exploit: Play a wider but still strong range when IP. Call their raises with hands that play well post-flop and can crack big hands (good playability).
Characteristic #2: Doesn’t often fold to 3bets and 3bet = the nuts.
Exploit: 3bet and 4bet with the best hands to get value from his tight range.
Tight-Aggressive
TIGHT = Plays mostly strong hands, AGGRESSIVE = prefers bets and raises; can be winning regs; multi-tabler; quick to fold most marginal spots post-flop and when OOP.
AKA: TAG, ABC or Reg
Common VPIP/PFR Stats: 12/10, 18/13
Color Coding: Yellow
Characteristic #1: Plays multiple-tables, so they’re selective, patient and they choose the best starting hands (small & value intensive range).
Exploit: Play strong hands against them, but speculative hands can crack their strong ranges.
Characteristic #2: Quick to fold weaker pairs and draws because they see little value in these hands.
Exploit: Bet and raise to earn post-flop pots, make sure your size hits their “pain threshold” so often at 2/3 pot or more.
Here’s my challenge to you for this episode: While you’re playing your next session, set a timer to go off every 10 minutes. When it does, pick a table and think about each player there and describe all you know about them – player types, weaknesses, how to exploit, etc. This will train you to profile your opponents and it’s a great way to test that you’re paying attention.
Now it’s your turn to take action and Scooby-dooby-doo something positive for your poker game.
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Having the ability to play aggressively is an important attribute to have when it comes to poker, especially when playing in the game of Texas Holdem. Being aggressive is the opposite of being passive, where you make bets and raises more frequently instead of just checking and calling at each point during hands.
Poker aggression opens more doorways to success in poker than it does to take a passive approach the game, which is why many successful players are aggressive.
It is vital that you are able to exercise a strategic aggressive style of play, as being aggressive does not mean simply betting and raising at every opportunity.
Playing aggressive poker well involves betting and raising when you have an advantage over your opponents. This can be when you have better cards, better position, or even when you have better poker ability than them. Aggression is only beneficial when you keep a cool head, and when you pick your spots wisely to make your bets and raises.
Poker aggression example.
Lets say you are in a hand holding A K and the flop comes K T 7.
In this spot you have top pair top kicker, which is a great hand but it can be easily cracked by the turn, especially since the board is coordinated with two cards of the same suit. If your opponent bets into you, it is important to be aggressive and raise, because you want to protect your hand and you do not particularly want you opponent to see another card that could potentially improve their hand to make it better than yours.
The board is quite coordinated, and your opponent could easily be betting with a worse hand (such as a draw or a lower pair). Your main objective is to be aggressive and bet enough to give your opponent the wrong pot odds to call to improve their hand, so that you can take the pot down on the flop. This is the much better play than being passive and calling, as you leave yourself open to being out-drawn on the turn.
This is one of the greatest aspects of being aggressive, as it can save you from getting into tricky situations in the middle of a hand. There are also a number of other advantages that an aggressive approach to the game can give.
Playing aggressively helps you to win more money by giving your opponents bad odds to call with draws and by also increasing your fold equity.
Using aggression to buy position.
'Buying position' means that you force opponents out of the pot in the pre-flop betting round that would be acting after you later in the hand.
Passive Aggressive Poker Strategy Examples
For example, we are two seats away from the button in a cash game holding Q J. Everyone has folded to us except for one player who limped in. If we raise it to 4BB and the seat next to the button along with the button folds, we have just 'bought position' for the rest of the hand.
Passive Aggressive Poker Strategy Rules
This means that we will be the last to act for the rest of the hand, giving us an advantage over any players who call after the button. Once again aggression triumphs over passive play, because if we had just limped in, it is more likely that the seat next to the button or button will have limped in also, which means we would not have position for the rest of the hand.
The more players you can force out of the hand that are acting after you, the better your position will be in the hand.
Using aggression to earn free cards.
If we are playing aggressively, we should be able to create an aggressive and possibly loose table image that our opponents will take note of when making their plays. By playing aggressively, our opponents are more likely to check to us, rather than betting themselves to see how we react to the hand before they respond with their play.
This is because our opponents will be less inclined to bet mediocre hands for fear of being raised off of them, and they will sometimes check big hands to us in hopes of inducing a bluff.
This can work to our advantage greatly if we flop a flush or a straight draw. If our opponent checks to us because of our aggressive style hoping to induce a bluff, we have then earned ourselves a free card to try and complete our draw, where normally they would have bet into us if we had not been playing aggressively.
Using aggression to get paid off.
If we are constantly playing aggressively, our opponents will start to give us less credit for our hands as the game progresses.
Our opponents will realize that we cannot constantly have the best hand every time we bet and raise, so they will start to call us down in the hopes of catching us out when bluffing. This works to our advantage when we then make a good hand, because our opponents may well still call us down as they no longer give us credit for having a strong hand.
Therefore, we will be making money each time an opponent calls because they do not believe us, instead of having opponents fold because they believe we have a strong hand. It is important however to try and be aware of times when our opponents may be trying to trap us, by calling with their own monster hands instead of raising and betting.
Passive Aggressive Poker Strategy Games
Poker aggression evaluation.
Passive Aggressive Poker Strategy Tactics
Hopefully you can see that being aggressive is the winning style of play when it comes to Texas Holdem. No matter whether you are a tight or loose player, being aggressive trumps passive play in almost every area.
Playing passively will rarely win you a decent amount of money from poker, so learn to play strong, aggressive poker.
If you watch winning players on TV or even in the online rooms, you will notice that they are exercising either a tight-aggressive or loose-aggressive style of play. Very rarely will you see a pro playing passively, as aggressive play is key to becoming a winning poker player.
Go back to the awesome Texas Hold'em Strategy.
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