Poker has a much more complex strategy than you may think. It’s not all about waiting until you get a good hand and then winning; it’s intricate and involves math, psychology, patience, and more. Poker’s strategic depth is simple: In every game, there are numerous changing factors players must adapt to and change their strategy accordingly. They must consider their opponents’ playstyles, the board state, stack sizes, hole cards, and much more. Those factors constantly change, meaning no two poker games are the same.
Poker rewards adaptation, so the best poker players have numerous strategies and game plans they use depending on the situation. Poker has existed for nearly two centuries, so its metagame has greatly evolved. One timeless strategy still very relevant today is exploitative poker. It involves identifying your opponents’ playstyle and aggressively changing your strategy to deal with them better. This poker guide will help you use exploitative poker against a common type of player: Passive players. It will explain the two types of passive players and how to beat them.
Types of poker players
Poker players are categorized into four groups based on their aggression and quantity of hands played. Players can either be loose or tight, and they can either be passive or aggressive. Loose and tight refer to how many hands someone plays; loose players play a wide variety of hands, while tight players only play the strongest hands. Passive and aggressive refer to how someone plays their hands; passive players prefer to check and call, while aggressive players like to bet and raise. The four main poker playstyles from these criteria are loose passive, tight passive, tight aggressive, and loose aggressive.
Loose passive poker players
These players are loose, so they play many hands, even mediocre hands. However, they are also passive, meaning they will check and call instead of betting and raising. That means they will often call every bet you throw at them just to see the following rounds, even when their hands have little potential to improve. That gives them the nickname “calling stations,” and they are often regarded as one of the easiest player types to exploit. Many new players play like this, as they are reluctant to fold and will instead call to the showdown and lose.
The main weakness of this playstyle is their stubborn reluctance to fold. Instead of folding to minimize their losses, they will call every bet and just lose at the showdown after committing a significant amount of money to the pot. They play so many mediocre hands that this style is rarely profitable, as they are likelier to lose than win at the showdown.
Tight passive poker players
Like loose passives, these players prefer to check and call instead of taking aggressive actions. Unlike loose passives, these players do not play a wide variety of hands. Instead, they do the exact opposite, sticking to only the absolute best hands in poker like AA, KK, and AK. They will fold at the first sign of aggression and only consider betting when they are confident they have the best hand.
These players have two main weaknesses, so experienced poker players consider this the most uncomplicated style to exploit. The first is their overreliance on folding. Folding is excellent for minimizing your losses, but folding too much makes you susceptible to bluffs and will cause you to miss out on potential wins. The second is their predictability. Folding until they hit a strong hand makes it easy to determine their hand strength, and then you can simply fold to deny them value from their hand.
Beating tight passives
Where to practice against passive players
We hope this article taught you about how to play poker against passive players. If you want to practice against them, sign up at GGPoker, the world’s largest poker room. Online poker gives you a wide variety of stakes to choose from, and most passive players prefer micro to low-stakes games since they are usually inexperienced. Online poker is also more convenient and faster-paced, allowing you to play more games against passive players in less time.
