Types of opponents Part 3 Poor loose players
Loose-passive
Not going away any time soon!
The phrase ‘curiosity killed the cat’ very much is applicable to these types of players. The psyche of these players is interesting. In a way they could be said to be the uber gamblers of poker. If they have a chance of winning the hand they are reluctant to give up on it. They are aware that bluffs happen in poker and hate to be bluffed out of a hand, and so they can be seeing going to the river with far too many marginal holdings, such as top pair poor kicker or even worse.
Wait, hit, and bet all the way
When playing against these guys, bluffing should be kept to a minimum. These guys in general tend to bet a bit more than their tight passive counterparts, but like other passive players they don’t raise much, so if they do raise be inclined to believe that they do actually have a decent hand. The majority of the time it is best to play these guys in a straightforward manner by waiting until you have a good hand and then making standard bets on each street.
Wish there was more
These sort of players lose a lot of money in No Limit Hold Em so they are not quite as abundant as some other poor players. The few of these guys who are regular players are often those that have a lot of money and are just playing poker for the sheer fun.
Don’t tap on the fish tank
They can be frustrating to play against at times, because they are simply unbluffable, and are often victims of abuse via the chat box; please don’t be one of the players who abuse them. Bad manners aside, abusing these players rarely serves any useful purpose and the last thing you want to do is drive these players away or worse again tighten up against you.
Maniacs
Full speed ahead
These guys through sheer bloody minded aggressiveness and stubbornness will buy a lot of pots. However, their aggressiveness too often lacks clear thinking and they haven’t got the wherewithal to drop gears when the game parameters demand a different approach.
Winning lots of pots is not the same thing as winning in poker
They don’t give enough credit to other players’ intelligence and often blindly run themselves into traps laid down by their opponents, having wildly betted and raised with either too weak or pure bluff hands. So although they might win more pots than other players, more often than not they end up losing their stacks in just one or two hands to their more patient observant opponents.
Action junkies often meet fatal end in poker
Lack of discipline, hand reading and situational thinking are the main factors which separate these players from their good loose aggressive counterparts. First and foremost they love the action of No Limit Hold Em, unfortunately for them the joy ride more often than not ends with a crash in the form of getting stacked.
In Part 4 we take a look at the altogether more dangerous and thankfully rarer loose player. The Clever LAG.
