Passive opponents

[ne14poker]

How do you adjust your play for passive opponents?

I've been playing 1/2 at Empire. I deposited 250BB to collect the reload bonus. I won 60BB at Party last week and started up 35BB at Empire and then over the last 4 sessions I've lost 45BB.

My VP$IP is 18%. I think that I play pretty good hands so I don't think that is my problem.

The tables that I was playing at were unusually passive. Both tight and loose passives, but definately passive. I rate passive as Aggression Factor <1.5 (excluding preFlop).

I'm only down $20 with 100 hands to go for my bonus. It is not the end of the world, but I'm puzzled. They seem to play Axo, any suited cards and reluctant to fold their blinds. It just seems that the only time I can get them off a hand is at the river when they couldn't catch their draw.

Is this passive trend a bonus chasing stragegy? Will it disappear once the bonus expires?

How do I adjust my play?

Should I discount more outs since they could be playing anything?

Should I stop raising top pair unless the board is completely uncoordinated?

[dvashun]

I have the same type of crowd at the B&M I go to and all I have to offer is be patient. You are going to suffer swings like this. I was down ~100BB over January and in February I got it all back and more. One thing that might help would be to reread the made hand evaluations in SSH. Keep playing solid hands and everything should even out.

[MrWookie47]

Just play solid, ABC poker. Your job is not to push them off of hands. Your job is to extract value from them with your good hands. To paraphrase Ed Miller in SSH (which you should get), the more they blunt your bluffing weapon, the more they're sharpening your value betting weapon. You want them to call. They're paying you money.

Edit: And if you ever don't raise top pair with a decent kicker on all but the most coordinated flops, kittens are going to start being killed left and right.

[turaho]

My biggest change against totally passive opponents is to stop bluffing. You're not getting them to fold and for all you know they have hidden power.

For example, I was playing a guy who limped UTG. Rest of the table folds, I raise QJs in the CO. Button and blinds fold, he calls. Flop comes Kxx rainbow. He checks, I bet, he calls. Turn is a blank. We both check it through. River is another blank. Checked through again. We flip over our hands.

Of course, he's got AKo.

I laughed for a good while after that. I guess he figured me for pocket aces.

[Sasnak]

1/2 has been extremely swingy for me. I was down a few weeks back then won it all back. Only to swing it off again. Last night was crazy again with 2 offsuit gappers in MP taking down pot after pot.

I'm in the same spot as you trying to learn how to manage these swings. It is worse than what I found at .50/1 at times.

My take is to play your hands the way they should be played and take your lumps when they draw out on you. I dropped 35BB in 2 hours last night to some horrible suckouts and finally went to bed early.

[ne14poker]

I promise. Don't want to hurt any kitties /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[hicherbie]

i think its best to value bet/raise relentlessly against LPs but do it less against TPs. LPs are god's gift to LL players, they just hand their money to you. when they suckout its definatly a good thing...it only encourages the other fish to try and do the same.

tight passives are more difficult to find i admit, but sometimes there are people that always fold unless they have a decent hand. value betting like crazy like these people should be done so carefully, as they are less likely to call down with worse hands.

for all the micros bluffing is just a bad idea. semi-bluffing is not.

[KaiShin]

Bluff less, bet marginal hands for value more.