I know I've got some poker players among my readers, and though I rarely post about poker strategy, the game Saturday night and the ridiculously long journey home combined to spark some thinking. And since at least one of the guys I played with Saturday night reads this blog from time to time, I write this at the risk of having him improve his game. There were 6 players in the game (a size that I like, I prefer smaller tables to larger ones) and 2 of us ended up winning with 4 losing significant amounts of money. That wasn't an accident.
The other 4 players were what poker strategists generally call "loose passive" (LP) players. If you play regularly, you may know LP players. You may yourself be an LP player. If so, you need to stop - unless you enjoy losing lots of money and getting the occasional high of having a good night. The hallmark of the LP player is that they play loose, meaning they play lots of hands and continue to play them even if they have a very small chance of winning, but also play passively, meaning they don't raise much and just make the minimum bets when they're called upon. They are the easiest kind of player to beat in a poker game.
The 4 guys at this game are not only loose passive, they're what I would call tight loose passive. I know that seems like a contradiction, but this is what I mean: they'll play almost any two starting cards pre-flop, but they have to get some little piece of it to continue. But any piece of the flop will make them stay in; if they can imagine a way in which their hand can win the pot, they'll stay in. That means that once in a while, they're going to hit their hand and win a pot - and that's exactly what you want them to do. You want them to win a pot like that once in a while because it keeps them calling bets after the flop hand after hand when the odds are strongly against them.
I'll give you an example. Early on in the game, I had AQ, raised preflop, got called by two players and the flop came AJ3. I bet and got a couple of callers. The turn was a blank, I bet and both still called. The river was a 3. I bet and got raised, but not a big raise. I called and, sure enough, one of them had a 3-7 in his hand and had hit his set on the river to beat me. I wasn't bothered by that. In fact, I was happy about it and said so. That player had started out the night on a roll and ended up losing a couple hundred dollars; the loss was almost inevitable. That hand would reinforce his natural tendency for LP play the whole night.
The problems with the way he played this hand are many. First, he shouldn't be calling with a 3-7 in the first place. Yes, they're "connectors" in a sense, but the gap is 3 cards. That means the only flop non-paired flop that could really help this hand is 4-5-6. If it was a 6-7, that would be better because that hand can hit in multiple ways: 3-4-5, 4-5-8, 5-8-9, 8-9-10. But 3-7 is just a bad starting hand and should only be played for free (if you're in the big blind and no one raises) or virtually free (if you're in the small blind and no one raises but everyone calls, giving you high pot odds).
More importantly, after the flop he hit his 3 and decided right then and there that he was playing the hand. After all, he figured, he could hit a set of 3s or he could hit a 7 for two pair to win the pot. But with the preflop raise from me and two overcards on the board, he had to know he was behind. And even if there were no 3s and 7s among the cards folded or burned, he is drawing to a maximum of 5 cards (two 3s and three 7s) out of 36 cards left in the deck (52 - 12 dealt out - 3 flopped - 1 burned). The odds of hitting his hand are slightly worse than 7-1 against, but he has two chances of hitting the card, so make it 3.5-1. Casinos make billions of dollars playing games where the odds against the player are more like 1.05-1; playing as a 3.5-1 underdog consistently will make you lose a lot of money.
So how do you play against an LP player? You make them pay for their loose play. Some would say that you should tighten up a lot, play only premium starting hands, but I don't agree with that. I think you loosen up your starting hands a bit, but be prepared to muck the hand if you don't hit a great flop. They aren't going to do a lot of preflop raising, so you can typically see a flop fairly cheaply with a marginal hand like, say, 8-10. But if you do hit a hand on the flop with that starting hand, you're likely to get called by more than one person and win a sizable pot. You can call a lot of $1 pre-flop blind bets when you know that, if you do hit the hand, you're going to win a pot of $30 or more. But unlike the LP player, you have to be prepared to muck the cards after the flop rather than continue to call looking for that 3-outer that makes your hand - you either hit it on the flop or you get out.
But when you've got a premium starting hand, you always raise with it - if they're going to call looking for a draw, make them pay for it every time because most of the time, they aren't going to hit it. You also pull back on bluffing - ironically, poor players are more difficult to bluff than good players, especially LP players who rarely fold. If you're at a table with a bunch of calling stations, there's no point in trying to bluff them. You only want them in the hand if you've got the best of it. And you only slow play if you've got the stone cold nuts and you want them to hit their 2nd place hand.
So that's it - basic strategy against loose passive players. One more thing should be noted: sometimes LP players will win. If they're catching above average cards on a given night, they can do very well. If you've got several of them in a game, chances are pretty good that at least one of them is going to catch a run of good cards (though that didn't happen on Saturday). Don't worry about it; this is a good thing. If you play with them regularly, you want this to happen. It's the addictive feeling that keeps them coming back and keeps them playing that way. All they'll remember is the time they walked away with $300, not the 8 times they walked away without $120 or more. If you have a night where you lose to them, just schedule the next game for as soon as possible - chances are you'll get your money back and then some.
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Actually, the first rule of playing guys like this is to never make them feel like they're doing something dumb by chasing a five out draw against your top pair. That being said...
Assuming you yourself aren't tight-weak or loose-passive, more than likely you'll be able to outplay these guys post-flop. The high-variance/high-reward technique would be to play big pre-flop with any hand you feel could turn into a nicely disguised one or a monster post-flop. Normally, a lot of these types you're mentioning would want to see a 37suited into a cheap flop, but are going to narrow their selection somewhat if you play back at them before they have a chance to improve their hand. If you can narrow them to a pair, an Ace draw or two cards with a face, then your ability to play back at them once the board hits is far more effective.
I play this style on the six-max $50 No Limit tables on Full Tilt, and if you don't shake someone off a Jack-Six with a raise pre-flop, you're not shaking them off it when they catch a little piece afterwards. You've got to swing the big stick early, hitting the table with pre-flop raises bigger than the "table standard." Psychologically, they're going to shrivel a little under that ragged unsuited three-gapper, and you can get them to let it go.
Trust me, these guys are going to tell you when you're beat if you give them the chance. Play big into them pre-flop, get away from the hands they tell you to post-flop. There's nothing like hitting a baby flush with 57 of hearts and watching Mr. Ace-Weak across the table unable to let his six kicker to his top pair go...
I think my favorite way to play against that type of player is when I start with a strong hand and bet pretty hard until the flop, catch the nuts on the flop and then try to check through. Works pretty well most of the time if I bet small after the river. Ususally if they've got a decent hand and want to play it, a small bet will suck them into an all in, at which point they get a great view of the felt where their chips used to be... and it works over, and over, and over...
My all time favorite was on a game a week ago. The guy started with pocket kings and I had 7h, 8h. The only reason I didn't toss it right away is he didn't make me pay much for a flop. The flop came out 4, 5, 6 (don't remember the suit) and he started betting hard. I called him but wouldn't raise. The last two were 3 and 9, so I had a seven card straight at that point, and had him figured for either bullets or kings. I made a light bet, he came back all in and the other guy still in the hand folded. I called...
Needless to say, his jaw hit the table when we turned it over.
You have four loose-passive players in your regular game? Can I join?
As for general strategy, it matters a lot whether you're playing limit or no-limit. You're not going to bluff most LP players off even a pair or ace-kicker in a limit game, so it's not usually worth trying. But in no-limit you occasionally will, and by mixing it up you should get more action from your value bets, assuming that these players are paying attention to you at all. I also agree with BG that you should raise big pre-flop with strong hands, or passable hands in position. LP players are far more likely to call with the worst hand pre-flop than post-flop.
As one of the four mentioned above, I think it hurts more reading about it...but now I have lessons for next time.
So from the basis of your entry, it's safe to assume that you (and Will)will be buying the ribs for the game at your place?
Actually, I already bought the ribs with the proceeds from Saturday's game. They're in the freezer. But don't tell Jeff, Ron or Mickey about this post or it'll ruin my profit margins. Well, you can tell Jeff. He's been told before, a thousand times. He's just compulsive. He can't not call.
I make an effort to on occasion play a few low-value hands passively after a pre-flop raise. It allows me a small, but worthwhile chance to trap into a devastating loss and it keeps people guessing and hopefully wrong about my other hands by picking spots where it isn't costly to show those hands. Playing with your table reputation is important in any long term strategy. If you are doing it right, you aren't killing yourself on the pot odds just to mislead expectations. A lot of alue can be gained on your traps. How much value can expect to get from a player relative to your odds of getting a good trap hand is something that depends on game conditions, so how much it is Ok to pay to stay in a hand varies.
The best people in the world to play against aren't the "LP" players, but tight players who when they get a good initial hand will try to get a lot of value out of it by placing small bets post-flop and on the turns yet absolutely refuse to give up to any bet with draws on the board because they started the hand ahead. Call them "passive-aggressive" players. They think they are just doing the right thing by "slow-playing" your money out of you by not making a serious effort to push you out of any hand. It works out for them most of the time too. It's like they can't not call once they've seen something that once was good. I'd much rather play someone who has this fault than someone who is constantly passively playing anything. In the long-run, you'll make money against both, but the latter is less likely to kill you by getting lucky. It's usually easier to read what kind of hands they have. You let them get their small wins until you catch something like a flush that'll break them and their dogged belief that "pocket queens can't lose!" When I can reliably conclude someone is playing this way, my eyes open wide. They're just waiting to be taken to the cleaners. And it's surprising how many people out there are like this. I'm sure you see 'em Ed.
I disagree strongly with the idea that you never have any business playing a "3 7" or other similar hands unless its free or near it. Consistent LP play is the way of the major losses, but there are situations where it is okay to pay a little more to play a bad initial starting hand.
"but worthwhile chance to trap"
This, of course, assumes you aren't so passive that you won't change your betting to get everything you reasonably can expect out of a person when your initial passivity pays off. If you're so passive that you won't even do this, then that's a different story.