In this free online poker article Gloves looks at postflop play against the 4 main player types of loose-tight + passive-aggressive in free poker and nano stakes online poker games. Justin, over to you:

For quite some time, I didn’t know exactly what to write about in my third article. Many ideas floated through my head – cover variance perhaps, or start covering tournament strategy and how it’s fundamentally different from cash strategy.

However, while I’ll definitely cover those topics in the future, the title of this series again sprang to mind. “From the Ground Up”. And I realized that in part one some general poker mindset concepts were covered and in part two some general preflop concepts and strategy was covered (and I also introduced hand ranges, which will come into major play in this article – go back and read the hand range section in part 2 if you need a refresher).

So, logically, it makes sense to continue just as if we were progressing in a poker hand. So we get to the flop with a solid hand (remember, no playing trash!)…but, now what?

And postflop play, in my opinion, is really what makes poker such a complex, beautiful game.

Hopefully by the end of this article you readers will both see this as well as know how to play a solid postflop style.

Postflop play is the weakest aspect of most poker players’ games (including mine, no doubt!).

In poker, there are 4 different styles of player (tight/loose) + (passive/aggressive).

In the nanostakes (NPP games and real money games through 5nl (.02/.05 blinds)), each of these player types make a few key mistakes. Hopefully, we’ll look at each player type in depth and discuss how to exploit them.

First, you have the loose-aggressive (LAG) “maniac”

> These are the guys who are betting and/or raising way too often.
> They’ll often cbet (bet flop after raising preflop) almost 100% and will also bet turn and river far too often (keep in mind we hit ~33% of flops long-term).

The trick to playing these guys is to realize that their range in any given spot is extremely wide. What this means is that if you flop second or third pair, calling their bets and raises is often hugely profitable because they’re betting repeatedly with absolutely nothing so often.

They’re somewhat difficult to play against because it takes a lot of guts – calling 3 streets (each a relatively large bet, usually) with third pair weak kicker is not particularly easy, but you have to realize that against some of these guys third pair is basically the same as top pair and so you just shouldn’t fold.

That doesn’t mean to always call down any pair against these players (because there are varying degrees of maniacs; some players will really be betting and raising 100% of the time while others are betting and raising too often but not extremely so).

Another thing to note is that your draws (and as such, suited and connected hands preflop) go way up in value because if you hit your draw you’ll often get paid off bigtime (this is a concept known as implied odds, but I won’t elaborate on this until a later article).

So ultimately against these players pair hands go up in value and draws go up in value. Pay attention at the tables to get a good feel for a player’s range (is he a true spewing maniac, or is he just hyper-aggressive) and try to make these profitable “thin” (not super easy) calldowns against these players.

In general, you should also be waiting for the river to raise these players with your strong hands because they’re going to be betting all 3 streets anyway; you lose lots of value if you raise flop or turn and get them to fold.

A second major player type is the loose-passive (LP) “calling station”

> These guys are often limping or calling hands preflop and not raising very often.
> Postflop they often check-call down while only betting or raising their very strong hands.

These players are very very easy to play against, and you run into tons and tons of them in nanostakes games. Basically, you just want to widen your valuebetting range against these players and never bluff.

So you can often bet down (bet all 3 streets) with hands like weak top pair and even second pair against many of them and just check/fold your bluff hands. When you get raised, you should realize that your second pair and even top pair hands become pretty worthless and you should generally be folding (although again, it depends on the specific opponent).

Draws are also very easy to play against these guys. When we have a draw, we can just check down until we hit and then we can just start betting for value.

Out of position, don’t be afraid to lead on flop and turn if you hit a pair – in nanostakes games you won’t be exploited by these loose-passive players for doing this (against some loose-aggressive and tight-aggressive players you might be) and since they’re unlikely to bet (they’re passive) you will gain value in doing this.

A third major player type is the tight-aggressive (TAG) “ABC Player”.

> In microstakes games, these are generally the most solid opponents you’ll face, but thankfully they’re also pretty rare.

The articles in this series even advocate playing a solid, thinking TAG style.

As you move up in stakes, the real sharks tend to be LAGs, but at micros LAG players make tons of mistakes (generally being overaggressive in bad spots), and it’s also tougher to pull off bluffs (remember, LAG players bluff a lot in order to put constant pressure on their opponents).

> Basically, TAG is how we should be playing at these stakes and we should generally avoid getting into large pots with other TAGs.

> A standard TAG player will be opening reasonable ranges preflop, typically for raises, and they’ll generally be the postflop aggressor as well.

They’ll be cbetting pretty wide but shutting down on later streets a fair amount and they’re very unlikely to spew off their stacks by check-raising or betting down with air.

That said, they also won’t be calling down with their weak pair hands (think second pair and often top pair hands) or draws (without proper odds); they’ll just be generally getting out of the way OOP (Out of position) when they have nothing and playing a solid style IP (In Position) that’s hard to exploit centered around playing solid hand ranges and betting often for value and to get folds out of other tags and tight-passive players.

They don’t get out of line too much. The way to profit out of these guys (when IP) is to cbet flop wide (you’ll get a lot of folds) and to generally slow down if you’re raised.

When you’re OOP, the only real way to exploit these players is to be check/raising flop and turn wide, but you don’t really want to be check/raising with air against thinking players especially at nanos, it’s just super high variance, unnecessary, and will lead to a lot of ugly spots (like when you get flatted after c/ring).

Again, TAG is the style of play we should be emulating as it’s just all-around solid and hard to exploit – don’t get out of line too much (unless you have a read or some other reason to), pick your spots, and get lots of value from other players’ mistakes.

The final major player type is the tight-passive (TP) “rock”

> These players are also pretty common at nanostakes games.
> They often limp in as opposed to raising, and while they call as opposed to 3betting (reraising preflop) they don’t play very many hands as a standard.

They’ll rarely raise you postflop without a true nut hand (think sets or better, usually) and won’t call down without hitting a strong piece of the board (typically top pair).

Thankfully, their tendencies also make them simple to play against.

Their ranges are typically limited to pocket pairs and high card hands (KQ, AJ+ for example), so a ton of middling flops (T84r for example) can be cbet basically 100% as we’ll get folds a ton of the time. We should basically be cbetting flops very wide and shutting down on turn/river if called on flop without a good reason for continuing.

If we have a strong top pair or better, we should continue betting down after the flop. With our draws, we can again check it down until we improve and then bet (although we will rarely get value in those spots).
They’re really straightforward – they only raise with the nuts and are folding too often, so we should raise a lot and bet a lot of flops to profit against them.

Now that we have a solid grasp on the 4 main player types and how to exploit them (but remember, everything is in degrees!

Some TAGs are almost LAG, some TPs are almost LPs, etc…so you have to adjust your play to your individual opponents, these player types are just a tool to help you do that!), I’m going to touch a little bit on a more advanced postflop concept, and it might just blow your minds.

The way we play our hand CHANGES the hand our opponent has.

Think about this for a minute. I haven’t asked you to do an exercise this week, so now would be a good time…grab that notepad and write down why you feel this statement is true or false. Much less work than the last article for sure, where I asked you all to approximate a whole bunch of hand ranges and to provide reasoning for the similarities and differences!

The key to understanding why this concept is true is understanding that poker is not a game of hands, poker is a game of RANGES.

This is another amazing reason why ranges are one of if not THE most important poker concepts to understand.

To illustrate, let’s give an example. Let’s say we’re on the button and it folds around to us.

> We decide we’re going to open (22+, A7o+, A2s+, KTo+, K9s+, QJo, QJs, JTs). That’s 23.4% of hands.
> Now let’s say we’re on the button and there was a raise and a 3bet before us.
> We decide we’re only gonna raise (QQ+, AKs) in this spot.
> We’re still on the button preflop, but now we’re only playing 1.7% of hands!

This applies to postflop play as well – if our villain has x range, when we check/raise if he opts to continue his range is DIFFERENT than if we had just called.

Our actions directly affect the range of hands it’s possible for our opponents to have in any given spot. I’m going to let you guys mull over why this is important for a while.

In the future, I’ll definitely delve into it, but for now just think on it and why it might be important to understand, as the true meaning behind this is dense enough to merit its own article.

A few words of conclusion:
I’m aware that thus far things have been more theoretical than practical, and that’s for a number of reasons.

First off, poker is a very fluid, dynamic game, and I find giving specific advice for a general situation is a flawed way of doing things.

In addition, however, this series is about building your game from the ground up. Hopefully we’re establishing a sound theoretical base for a solid poker game with which you guys learn to think about poker (general to specific, as opposed to the other way around).

At that point, you can analyze your game and specific situations yourselves (although poker buddies to talk specific spots with are a great help always, and you can contact me with any comments/suggestions as well as questions (pertaining to the article or just general) by commenting on the articles, on the NPP facebook page, on my blog, or by email at duncelanas@hotmail.com) in addition to getting more into advanced poker concepts (which are really just extensions of these concepts I’m teaching you now, although some are counter-intuitive).

In the coming weeks, however, things will be a little more concrete (at least for some articles), as I have one planned on implied odds and draws already as well as some future thoughts for delving into some basic to intermediate poker math.

Hope you’ve all enjoyed, and the next article should be up in about a week!

-Gloves

Check out Gloves lesson 1 in this series here – Patience on steroids “Common Sense Poker”

Check out Gloves lesson 2 in this series here – Hand Ranges, Playable Pockets, Table Position and Limping

Check out Justins personal blog here (more advanced stuff)

Check out all the pro written NoPayPOKER.com lessons on the free online poker training page

Related posts:

1. From the Ground Up A Beginners Guide to Building a Solid Poker Game Part 2
2. From the Ground Up A Beginners Guide to Building a Solid Poker Game – Part 1
3. How To Play Poker For Beginners Ultra Basics Guide
4. Article 4: Premium Pockets Dictate Your Game Play – Part 1
5. A Fast Free Online Poker Guide To The Importance Of Position In Poker Games