Types of opponents Part 2 Tight players
Tight Passive
Prepared to sit back and just let things happen
Tight passive players don’t fare well in No limit Hold’Em. They do not maximize the value of their good hands, they miss out on two many positive bluffing and semi-bluffing opportunities and are pushed off hands too easily. They also do not give enough action. Although the phrase ‘you got to give a little action to get some’ is perhaps too frequently used these days, still there is a large bit of truth to this statement. Tight passive players are far less likely to get paid off when they make a strong hand than more aggressive players.
Note the following when playing against these types of players
- Steal a bit more liberally pre flop as they will seldom play back at you and if they do you will know that they invariably have a strong hand, making your decision whether to continue in the hand or not much easier than when facing a trickier opponent. For example it’s normally wise to fold a hand such as ATo to a re-raise preflop from a tight passive player as there’s too much chance that your hand is dominated. However if you have sufficient odds and or implied odds you might very well call with a small pocket pair in the hope of hitting a set.
- Continue Bet on the flop a lot. They are less likely to get tricky and re-raise you as a bluff. If they call you then it’s usually best to give them credit for a hand and not continue to bet on further streets unless you have a genuinely string hand.
- If they raise or make a decent sized bet then fold unless you also have a strong hand. However If they bet a little it’s likely they have a draw or a mediocre hand. In that case, you can still call if you have a reasonable hand and occasionally maybe even bluff or semi-bluff raise.
- When these players are sticking around in the pot, it’s nearly always with at least a decent hand, when you are holding a very strong hand yourself in these cases then there is a very good chance that you will get paid off by these players as they will be thinking they finally have a good hand and will be reluctant to leave it go.
Fine tune your bullying techniques
The great thing about these types of players is that you can essentially gain a lot of control over them by basically pushing them around. As you get more experienced in the game, you can virtually sense the key times when it’s important to lay off them for a little while before continuing once again to bully them.
Plenty to go round
The other bit of good news is that there are plenty of these sort of players around especially at micro and to a lesser degree at small stakes. They lose in the long run but don’t tend to lose so big so quickly like some maniacs do and so don’t abandon poker quite as readily as some other weaker players.
Tight Aggressive
Ask questions in the form of bets and raises
There is another type of tight player who is altogether a different type of animal; he is the tight aggressive player. Like the passive poker player he will usually fold his marginal hands but unlike the tight passive player he is not one for sitting on the fence. If he has got a hand he is actively trying to find ways to extract value from in the form of bets and raises. He is also prepared to bluff and semi bluff more frequently than the tight passive player, making him a much more difficult opponent to face and get an accurate read on.
Solid, dependable but a bit too predictable perhaps?
While adopting this style of play alone is no guarantee for poker success, nonetheless it is the style of most winning No Limit Hold Em players. The tight aggressive poker player’s main problems are that they can fall too often into predictable lines of behavior. Meaning that they can get bluffed out too easily and their hands tend to be easier to read than most. That’s why it’s important when playing this style to do something different and unexpected from time to time to ensure your opponents never get too comfortable.
In Part 3 we will look at the weaker type of loose players, i.e. the loose passive players and the maniacs.
