So many of the players you will encounter, especially in live games at casinos will play pretty passively, so we have constructed our best tips for making money from these types of players! So you can keep these in mind the next time you face these opponents.
Passive players are honest, so let’s counter that
They don’t care if you raised pre-flop with Ace-King, they will call in the blinds and lead out on low flops that they hit even though we could have a tonne of over-pairs in our range.
They do this when they have hands they consider strong, so it’s worth noting that this might not always be as strong as we might think, quite often it can include hands like weak second pairs and such.
So be mindful not to make huge laydowns versus these weak passive type players.
So we know what they do when they are strong, or at least strong in their mind, so how do they play when they are weak?
They Check! So we will want to mix in some checks ourselves or very small bets to exploit them when they are weak if we have good hands and we can look to bluff them a tonne when they check with our misses too.
Because these players will over-fold we need to bet more!
We will want to merge our ranges and turn a tonne of our marginal hands into bluffs to bluff out better holdings that passive players will lay down because they are folding just too many hands.
Let’s say we play a pot and we flop second pair, we C-bet and get called and the Turn brings a scary card that brings in a draw… We would often just check this type of hand back and look to realise our equity and not get raised off the pot but we can change our strategy against this player type to make more money!
Fear their Bets but Keep Implied Odds in Mind
There are a few key points to keep in mind when are against these types of players when they bet, we will want to continue less often unless we have a strong hand ourselves.
They are going to be betting when they are super strong and confident and they will not be shutting down like other players would, as they are not just going to be taking one stab at the pot, these players aren’t betting when they miss remember.
Therefore we will want to continue with hands that have great implied odds should we hit our hand, because these are not the types of players to get away from strong top pair hands or overpairs when we hit our sets for example.
A recent example: I played a €60 tournament in my local casino….
Blinds are 150/300
I look down at my holding in the Cut-Off to see a very playable hand J♦ T♦ and raise to 700
The small blind player, who is a super passive lady Re-raises to 1500!
Now firstly I would like to say that this is a huge mistake on her part, there is no holding I can lay down to this raise, for a few reasons.
- I’m getting massive implied odds, I know that I can easily call this tiny raise and play perfectly in position and only continue on flops that benefit my hands more than hers.
- My implied odds are huge here, the lady is basically turning her hand face up and saying I have Aces or Kings because passive players like this only use these tiny sizings when they aren’t scared pre-flop, earlier on a similar player made a massive pre-flop raise and showed down pocket Queens.
- I’m never going to get in trouble with top pair hands as I know exactly my opponent’s range, so I either hit my hand and scoop a huge pot or I can easily get away
So, with those thoughts in mind, I am never folding here, if I hit my flop I can get her whole stack because she will be so poor at avoiding going broke on bad boards for her hand, I call the tiny 3-Bet and we take a flop.
Flop: Q♣ 8♦ T♥
So normally this would be a great flop for us… however we only have second pair and our opponent definitely has a huge hand.
So with 3,300 in the pot our opponent leads out (As passive players do with their strong hands)
SB: Bets 4,500
So as we can see when our passive opponents have good hands they don’t mess around they smash some chips into the pot!
Although we definitely have the worst hand our opponent started this hand with around 20,000 chips, we still have huge implied odds to continue in this hand as even against pocket Ace’s we have a tonne of equity in this pot (around 35%)
There are also scare cards that can come off that will stop our opponent from betting some Turn cards and allowing us to realise our equity on the River.
Cards like Queens and Kings hitting might slow our opponent down and make them check.
We can also make the best hand with any Ten, Jack or Nine hitting the Turn and likely stack our opponent.
We opt that it’s going to be worthwhile us calling at least one bet here to try and win the money… so we flick in the 4,500 chips and close our eyes for the Turn card!
Turn: 6♣
A complete blank hits and our opponent makes yet another huge over-bet and moves All-in! Betting around 16,000 into 12,300.
Which against our exact hand is a perfect play, however, if we can have JTs here, we can have QQ, 88, TT, J9, QT, Q8s so our opponent has done fine in this exact scenario but in a tonne of other pots we where we can have them beat they will lose their whole stack by playing just too predictably.
Obviously, though it goes without saying that we fold the Turn and our opponent says I had the Aces and tables them, not to my surprise, I put her on KK+ but my read was more weighted towards Aces due to the bet sizing pre-flop.
Use Large Bets
These players will generally be scared of going broke, so look to size up bets to put these opponents to the test.
In this previous post we looked at the concept of betting geometrically, meaning sizing bets at the same percentage on all streets to apply maximum pressure or to get maximum value.
So, for instance, we might need to bet 120% pot on all streets of action to get all of our opponents chips by the River, or if they are shorter stacked we may only need to bet 60% on each street.
This is an important thing to take into account when playing against these types of players because it will allow us to bluff them out when we are betting with our draws and it will allow us to get huge value from them when they are stationing us down in the pot with a worse holding.
Sum Up on Crushing these Passive Players
So, in summary, we will want to apply these core game plans:
- Bet when we get checked to lots
- Bluff lots even with hands we would normally look to showdown
- Fear their aggressive action, but continue when getting huge pot odds if you hit in deep stack situations
- Size up to get all their chips in the middle with good hands or to apply the most pressure with bluff
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