One of the most important factors in beating a weak-passive player is recognising your image and adjusting to this quickly. Weak-passive players are generally fish who will be playing just one table and will be incredibly attentive to what you are doing. Given that playing poker is just a pastime to them, they want to focus whatever understanding they have of the game on just one table. If you are a tighter player in general, you will get a lot more moves through against this player type than if you are more active.
So how should you go about exploiting whatever image you have at the table? Well, firstly, you should have a rough idea what sort of hand they have and what they are liable to call you down with. A large proportion of weak-passive players will happily peel a turn with any piece of a flop (4d-5d on Qc-6d-Kd, for instance), but often they will give up to a second barrel. If you haven’t been getting too out of line, you can definitely get away with betting scare cards and throwing out big bets on scary boards on later streets. Bet-sizing is crucial to beating these guys, as they will not be thinking on a high enough level to assume that a smaller bet is likely to be for value – they view bigger bets as stronger hands and are way less inclined to call a bet that would put their stake in jeopardy. But if you are going to make a play at one of these guys make sure your image is CLEAN!
Balancing act
If you play an active, involved style of poker, you will get noticed by this guy. If you have shown down any air, made big bets with any sort of marginal hands or, heaven forbid, made a big bluff that got to showdown, you might have to take a step back to consider your limitations when in a pot with the weak-passive player.
When you are in a hand against this player type, your mantra should be value, value, value. You should never be thinking about actually playing poker and making moves, just making strong hands and extracting value from their calls. As with virtually every single live cash game up to £2/£4 in the UK, complex thinking play will generally be a second-best strategy to just having the best hand at showdown.
Read part I
Read part III