Posted by Johnnymac 8:20 AM
In response to Fro's post below, I would speculate that a passive game is a great opportunity to make money for the following reasons. This is how I have made money the past few months playing no limit, although recently a lot of people have gotten a lot more aggressive back at me lately and my sugar tree has run dry. Passive games are a great opportunity to make money, although one's aggressiveness needs to be balanced with the risk of being disinvited from the game and one's desire to continue playing in the game. Uncomfortable people don't like to play poker with the people who make them uncomfortable, unless they are forced. Fro touched on this yesterday, btw, but it's an important consideration. Remember Wild Bill Hickock's admonition that playing in a bad game (with cheaters in his case) is still better than not playing at all, so don't take this too far too soon.
 
How my theory about approaching passive games. These ideas probably require multiple occasions playing with the same people, but likely could apply to a single occurrence, too, or even during the first (cheaper) part of a tournament:
 
1.) At first, play along with the passive style for the most part and don't draw attention to yourself, unless you have a winning hand.
 
2.) When you do have a winning hand, bet the hell out of it. Overbet the pot, even. Make the other guys uncomfortable enough to where they don't want to call. Even if no one calls and you win by surrender, be sure you show your cards whenever you do this because you are trying to convince the passive players that you are betting this way because you have a winner. This means that at first you can't bluff or even semi-bluff - you want to show your winning hands every time the other guy folds so as create the image that you are betting this way only because you have a winning hand.
 
3.) Eventually people will start to fold whenever you bet this way. Whenever you hear comments regularly about how lucky you must be or how often you have winning hands, then it's OK to begin semi-bluffing the flop, but back off as soon as you miss a draw and encounter resistance and certainly don't try and take your bluff all the way to the end. Most players will never remember your big bet on the flop, but they usually will remember that you bet big on the turn and then checked and folded the river card and they will certainly remember if they ever snap you off in a big bluff on the end. If they do this enough you have short-circuited the process and can skip to item 6.
 
4.) Once you hit a few big drawing hands, be sure to show your cards whenever you win and point out that you were drawing. Even recreate the hands for the other players and try and get them to follow the logic of why you bet when you did. Pretty soon they will be doing the logic for themselves and will automatically assume that you hit your draw whenever you bet big on the flop or turn. At this point they are now sufficiently trained to be susceptible to being bluffed and will be scared whenever you bet big, even if you don't show a winning hand for many hands in a row. This can be reinforced by showing strong hands every now and then when you actually do have one.
 
5.) It's wise not to bluff too often because you will only hasten the inevitable education of the other players, but you can now bluff a little bit now and thus play more hands than you would if you were just waiting for nice cards. Be sure to show the nice cards when they come, though, so you can try and prolong the powerhouse image as long as possible.
 
6.) Eventually the other players will catch on and start playing back at you. At this point the game is probably no long passive and has thus become a lot tougher to beat. You might even be well served to start looking around for a new game. Junell's game is like this: at first it was rather passive and easy to grind out wins but many of the previously passive players have learned to play aggressively. It's a different game than it was 6 months ago.

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