Player Archetypes and you.

[mtdoak]

This will be basic to alot of you, but for me this is really opening a new can of worms for me. In a full low limit game, you use player archetypes to establish a range of hands, border line decisions. But, as I'm quickly learning, where in a full game you can play position and the cards you are dealt, in short, since so many pots are HU, you need to take into consideration your 'player type'. After taking a rough beating of -200 BB over 4k hands, decided it was time to reevaluate my play. After thinking long and hard about my play, i realized my bliggest flaws:

#1. Bluffing the wrong players.
#2. Making marginal call downs vs the wrong players
#3. Overplaying top pair/overpair vs the wrong type of players.

As you can see, my "card" play was passable, maybe even winning, but adjusting my "player" play is costing me. So I sat down tonight, and made a list of player archatypes in shorthanded 6 max poker.

Player Archetypes:

Tight Aggressive tricky: The player you don’t want to play against. Will slowplay, trap, and push. Great at isolation/hand protection. Find and label these players quickly. Stay away from if you can, but if you must play, play in position. These are the players you should emulate.

Tight Aggressive straight forward: Will bet when he has the best, will semibluff, will try to get the value for his hand. Easy to play against, both in and out of position. Somewhat predictable and usually can put on a reliable range of hands.

Tight Passive: Your ideal player to your left. Be definition straight forward. Will rarely raise without a winning hand, capable of some semibluffing. Will occasionally try plays, but very rarely. Value bet big hands, but be wary of obvious straight/flush cards vs them.

Loose/Passive: By definition, somewhat straight forward. Do not bluff this player. Will not make moves, but you will struggle driving this player out of pots. Very loose understanding of odds. Will take the worst of it regularly. Value bet generously. More trapping by definition, will often slowplay hands until the river to try and squeeze the most of it. Gut shots, runner runner flushes, are all in the playbook. Will rarely release a pair, so be wary of one final shot with AQ high.

Loose aggressive: Plays too many hands, takes them too far, but takes them too far with the best of them. Constantly trying to push players out of pots. Can be very tricky, loves semibluffing and will often overplay top pair/no kicker hands, and often will bluff scare cards. Never may big laydowns vs them, A high can be good, but play it by texture and good notes.

Maniac: Blind aggression. Cards rarely matter, they have one tool, a hammer. Value raise and reraise with big hands (min. two high pair and up), but be wary of high card call downs/top pair or even overpair overplays. You cannot put any hand past them. Hammer them with quality hands and let them bluff off their chips. You can call them with very little, but make notes of their playing styles. Should almost always play in position. Isolate often.

Any additons/comments?

[w_alloy]

I find that in SH archetypes are too narrow. I think just developping reads and using stats (beyond just the standard ones) is much more usefull. There are so many players that arent in any of your catagories; for example today I playe with 2 different people who were 60/30 preflop and passive postflop. Which catagory? Also, one had a wtsd of 55 and one was 35, so they actually played completely different games postflop.

You can actually come up with decent catagories by having one for postflop and one for preflop, but this creates 36 catagories. Its so much easier just to never really catagorize anyone, or at least make the bulk of your decisions based on individual stats and reads.

[IGMorton]

well, i like your archetypes. i agree that most players i have run into fall into one of those categories. perhaps there are a few oddball players who don't, but your descriptions cover the vast majority.

i think it's so very easy to fall into the trap of robotic play, that any attempts we make to understand the opponents are of great value. better to get some sort of read and put that in your notes than to have nothing at all.