Let's start the boring preflop thing again

I'm going to describe a table situation I have trouble with and tell my thought process. I hope people are willing to comment on my thought process and questions (I numbered them);

So we're playing micro stakes with some tag/nits and some loose passives at the table.

1. The tag/nits fold a lot preflop and are straightforward postflop, so they don't really dictate my preflop hand choice in this situation.

Let's assume the loose passive has stats of 50/5/0.5.
2a. Am I right in my thinking on a fundamental level, that because villain is playing a weaker range, I can widen my range as well?
2b. Does this count both IP and OOP?

Let's say I'm CO, BTN and CO are standard TAG or nit and therefor don't bother me much, passive villain (50/5/0.5) is BB.
3a. What's an indication of the wideness of my range to open profitable? (type of answer I'm looking for is for example 30%, or 2/3 of his vpip, or 20-40%?)
3b. Am I right that opening stuff like A9,KT,QJ (generally cards with more cold equity, instead of implied odds hands like SC's) are the better choice against these opponents?

4 How do both 3a and 3b change when villain is playing 30/10/1 ?

Fundamentally: Does the loose passive fold a lot postflop, or call a lot postflop.

The fact you're focusing on his preflop play highlights a basic error in your analysis of him.

Does it really?

From NLTAP: "there are four simple adjustments to make against loose players, both passive and aggressive ones:
1. Loosen up. Play looser preflop when the loose opponent has entered already, especially when you have position and stacks are deep"

For the wideness (not type of hands) of your range, are villains postflop tendencies really the primary variable?

If villain is loose preflop, but folds a lot postflop, there's lot's of small pots to take, so we can open our range. There is reason to do so with hands that fair well against villains range after the flop. As he will either have folded the flop, or continued with a good hand...and we want a better hand or none at all.
So it makes sense to expand our primary hands with hands like SC's and Axs.

If villain is both loose preflop and postflop, theres more postflop value. Villains goes to showdown with weaker hands, so we can play weaker hands and still get value.
It makes sense to open up with hands that generally have good equity (they hit relatively often and fairly good), like high cards.


It might make sense to play extreme fitorfold against the second villain and limp a very wide range for example as long as the other players at the table aren't exploiting that. If they are, there's probably a middle way in folding some more and raising some more.


For the most part these are just my thoughts though. If think differently or like to share how you respond on the postflop tendancies I'd be glad to hear and discuss.

minsim, i think you're trying to hard. this deep level of thinking is unnecessary at the micros.

Postflop tendencies are what matter most when dealing with 50/5 or 30/10 types. If you are having trouble with them, seat select better by keeping them on your right, with the tags/nits on your left.

If you are having trouble identifying their postflop tendencies try this:

Use Folds to cbet, folds to turn bet and folds to river bet on your hud. Color them:

0-40 Red
40-60 Yellow
60-100 Green

After a few orbits these stat should come into play because they are playing so many hands. Value bet the RED(stations) guys and Isolate and cbet/double barrel the GREEN(folders) guys.

Weak players will also bluff the river too much so always check their bet river % when you get to the river. 30% or more usually means they are bluffing too much.

Yeah, very different ranges v's the two. Think about it.

Against someone who folds a lot postflop (high fold to cbet%) you can play a stupidly wide range since you get your value from him folding to almost all your c-bets. If he does call you stop putting money in (and if you have position these guys often donk anyway saving you even the c-bet).

Against someone who calls a lot postflop (low fold to cbet %) you want to play hands that have some showdown value, so you play more high cards and less SCs since TPGK will be the nuts v's these guys most of the time.

So we have a wider range in both cases, but their postflop play dictates HOW we widen that range.

Jager and bjsaust, your advice is freak'n awesome. I'm so glad this was posted. This is the exact stuff that I need to solidly work into my game.!

Semi-thread hijack, but this is an example of what I've been trying to get at in the BC recently. You can try to find out what to do in a wide variety of situations, or you can spend time away from the tables thinking about spots and learning the WHY behind the advice.

It would be very easy to answer "Yes play a wide range because villain is bad/you're ahead of his range/whatever" and blindly follow that advice. However if you think through the situations, think about the kinds of villains you're familiar with, stuff like that, then you can come up with a much more well directed adjustment for ANY specific villain.

This thread already helped me a lot in realising I have gotten rusty in making seemingly easy decisions.

Hyper; I know I am, but knowing why I do things this deeply just makes me confident about my gameplan. I can't stand making decisions just because I read I should, or everyone tells me to.

Jager; I will follow your advice and put those up at my HUD. I wasn't happy with my layout anyway, so this is a good time to add some things as well.

Bjsaust; thanks a lot man, very solid advice.

It seems the discussion this far applies most to when we have position on the loose player. (although maybe it isn't)

Is there something to add to the table conditions where we do not have position?

Let's put us in a situation where we are CO, and the loose passive guy is BTN. (the one that's a calling station postflop as well, not the flop folding type)
Blinds are tags/nits that at least are partly able to exploit a wide limping range of us.

My view;
I often turn into a preflop nit like 10/8 in this situation, or just move tables. While those are viable options imo, there seems to be a better way to handle it.
Also from a fundamental point of view I think there's room for opening up, instead of narrowing our range.

But really; opening up wide and not cbetting seems to be the one strategy not to use against this player, or is it? (I'm not sure)

- Should we just keep cbetten, but realise that we're cbetting for lighter value (like A high or bottom pair being for value)

- Would it be (more) profitable if we decide to lower our PFR size to 2 or 3 BB (assuming this makes the blinds exploit us way less often then if we limp) and cbet bluff way less often?
(some sort of fit-or-fold, but paying a bit bigger price then limping for the purpose of not being exploited by other players)

- Has anyone every tried a constant PFR size of 6+ BB in the mentioned situation?

Originally Posted by minSim

Hyper; I know I am, but knowing why I do things this deeply just makes me confident about my gameplan. I can't stand making decisions just because I read I should, or everyone tells me to.

it's a fine line between mental masturbation and applying to practice. make sure you're making an effort to apply the theory at the tables. if you're not, you're wasting your time and just feeling good about knowing what you should have done.

CO vs loose-passive BTN.
- continue to open-raise preflop (and depending on table texture u could limp sometimes if the blinds aren't squeeze-monkeys)
- cbet less times (only cbet when u hit something)
- bet more % of the pot
- i don't think u need to adjust the size of the PFR. it'll just bloat the pot and put u in "should i should i not" vs a loose-passive.