Passive Aggressive Poker Strategy
Passive aggression is a way of expressing negative feelings, such as anger or annoyance, indirectly instead of addressing them directly. Passive-aggressive behaviors are often difficult to. Playing too many hands in a loose fashion makes postflop strategy much more difficult. Aggressive poker is also a more profitable strategy than passive play, provided you don’t take it too far. Aggressive players are the hardest for other players to deal with. What Is a Loose-Aggressive Player?
Last week I was discussing what I call the tar baby approach with a fellow poker player. The tar baby is a character from a story in a children’s book I used to have. To trap the wily rabbit, the fox and bear made a baby rabbit out of tar. When the tar baby wouldn’t say, “good morning” to him, the wily rabbit was insulted and punched him. He got his hand stuck in the tar so he punched him again then kicked him twice, getting both hands and both feet stuck in the tar.
This situation parallels how passive players get value from their overly aggressive opponents. They act weak, whether in body language or by checking, then they just call the bets of their opponents. I think they do just fine in getting value for these hands using this approach. And I completely understand why they end up with this style of play. But I think passive players are capped at being small losers to breakeven in the long run.
The reason they can’t be consistent winners is that they never win the pots where no one makes much of a hand. In hold’em, this is a reasonably frequent occurrence, both in limit and no-limit. Let me say that again. In order to be a consistent winner at hold’em, you must win at least your share of the pots where no one makes much of a hand.
Let’s talk a little more about passive players. I think that most passive players start out just playing the values of their own hand. So they bet when they have something and check and fold when they miss. Then their opponents notice this and stop calling them without good hands. The passive players soon realize that they aren’t getting any value for their holdings. They think, well that guy always bets when I check because I don’t have anything. Maybe I should try checking when I have a good hand and see if he still bets. Then the aggressive player bets, so the passive player feels rewarded for checking and starts checking for value more often. And so begins the journey to poker mediocrity.
So what should a beginning player facing this dilemma do? The other side of the coin is to be aggressive. I think the journey to being an aggressive player goes like this: They start out in the same spot as the passive player. They know their hand and they bet when it is good. Then their opponents start folding when they are betting. But the aggressive player thinks this is great. I can win the pots with just a bet. They start betting more when they have less of a hand and they start winning some of these pots. This reward causes them to bet a little more often and then even a little more often after that. Eventually, they are winning most of the pots when no one makes a hand. Not all aggressive players are winners though. As they become more aggressive, their opponents start calling more often.
This does a bunch of positive things for the aggressive player. It allows them to get good value when they make a good hand. They can even get excess value with their very good hands. It also allows them to win more than their share of pots when no one has made much of a hand.
It also does some bad things. Aggressive players are capable of spewing chips. Often they will continue to aggress far too late into a hand. Each street may bring a new reason to bet, such as a scare card or a missed draw. Aggressive players often fall prey to the tar baby approach from the passive players. The biggest trap that the aggressive players fall into is playing too many hands. They see that they can just win pots by betting, so they start to think that the value of their hand isn’t important anymore. Then they think, well I should just be playing more and more hands, because I can win by just betting. This doesn’t work. The reason you are able to win more than your share of the pots is because your opponents are folding too often. If you start playing every hand, then your opponents will start folding less often. The percentage of the time you will show up with a good hand is reduced significantly. Your opponents will notice this and start calling more often. The result is you will get to showdown more frequently, and whichever opponent chooses to call this time will have a stronger hand range than you. This will mean you lose more pots that you win.
The key to playing aggressively is to keep it in balance. This starts with having a solid starting hand range. I will dig into this idea more in my next column. ♠
Rep Porter is a two-time WSOP bracelet winner and is the lead instructor at ThePokerAcademy.com, whose mission is to help poker players achieve better results through better decisions and that is done by teaching poker in a way that makes learning easy and enjoyable with high quality courses taught by professional players.
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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.
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.
Passive Aggressive Poker Strategy Rules
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.
Passive Aggressive Poker Strategy Games
Now it’s your turn to take action and Scooby-dooby-doo something positive for your poker game.
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Passive Aggressive Poker Strategy Examples
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Passive Aggressive Poker Strategy Tactics
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