How to Punish Passive Poker Players

GTO Wizard helps you to learn GTO and analyze your game.
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Join Matt Hunt as he reveals the secrets to punishing passive poker players in this strategy-packed video. Learn how to exploit calling stations and boost your profits against players who lack aggression.
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How to Punish Passive Poker Players:
0:00 Intro
0:36 Definitions
3:35 Meet Mike!
4:30 Flop Exploits IP: HJ vs BB SRP
9:29 GTO Wizard AI Examples
13:02 Flop Exploits OOP: HJ vs BTN SRP
15:52 GTO Wizard AI Examples
19:23 Preemptive Flop Exploits
26:54 Facing Raises
32:35 Inelastic Sizing Exploits
36:42 Turn Play
43:50 River Exploits
51:50 What if Mike Doesn’t Fold Bluff-Catchers?
59:21 Overall Conclusions
#GTOWizard #GTO #poker

[@GTOWizard]

What’s your wildest ‘Mike’ story? Let us know down below! Also, what would you like to see Matt Hunt cover next?

[@gerardosantoro7567]

Ottimi contenuti,sarei molto felice se potreste aggiungere i sottotitoli in italiano grazie

[@nathanevans6292]

Went to the site. Only saw 6 max. What about eight or nine handed for live players?

[@ChinGuan31]

thanks for the content , its one of the most practical content i seen recently for poker. can i request for some live game scenario?

[@martinleithe8251]

Love your content! Thank you alot Matt Hunt! Would love some help on how to navigate multiway pots. I'm more of a live player, and in my areas. People don't like to fold, There's alot of 3-5 multiway pots. To nodelock what type of hands I see. suited connectors, pocket pairs. even offsuited connectors to flop straights.. and they don't fold open enders ever. high cards, Suited Aces and kings. but never slowplaying strong hands. I think you can exlude AK and JJ+ at full weight. those 3bet. maybe even TT and AQs does not call in my enviroment . I do squeeze, but I also call with some hands, and then end up struggling to maneuver, no idea bet sizes or how often I'm supposed to bet. And the hardest part. how to navigate against bets. how does it affect me how much people that are behind. And how do we navigate when it goes Bet - Raise. us to act with a middleing strong hand.. So much interesting spots to learn!

[@looper6394]

How to construct a balanced XR-X line? What type of marginal value hands like to take this line?

[@conorkleitz6837]

can you guys please go back to providing the slide show in the description? Having access to the actual power point has been extremely useful!!!! Please and thanks!

[@Texasfishingfamily]

Mike is 4 to 6 players at every table of my local card room. Great info.

[@mortalhordewarrior9285]

Yah I knew you weren't talking about worlds greatest pokerstar Mike Postle with that Mike comment. Good man

[@DarrenJohn10X]

Postle was definitely under-folding! Almost like he was uniquely motivated to see all cards

[@myCuzinVinny]

Love Matt hunt . Solve 4 why

[@Oque.Nos.Somoss]

Great content guys! I have a different point of view about 27:51 where I think I would not jam vs fish on the flop with nut flush draw, because I'm aware that this profile (passive and cs) when raising is not folding anymore, so if I have an ideia that I don't have FE, I'm probably not going for variance with a fish on the flop. But that's ok I'm aware that GTO Wiz is also thinking about potential earnings, etc. GL guys and thank you once again.

[@williamhubel4643]

This is the best video you’ve produced so far, but you could go into more detail for hours on this subject which is so relevant for so many players trying to bankroll build. I have so many questions… why you would overbet with 89 on KJ7 but check AQ is beyond me…??

[@joncorb540]

Probably because one has no showdown value plus a non-nut draw while the other has showdown value plus a nut draw

[@brandonnel4687]

Okay I understand this but what if im facing multiple calling stations at once? Making this stratagy flawed and over risky

[@yagasmurf]

You explaining this while manipulating GTO Wizard is giving me more useful information than if I tried to do this on my own. It’s like going to a restaurant with 100 items and 100 sauces and you are telling me that to evaluate the cuisine I should try these 3 entrees with 3 different sauces. Keep em coming. ❤

[@kezman82a]

Nice video! Pls do same against other player types also 🙂

[@blazeron12]

Mike Hunt is a great poker player. Not all Mike's are OMCs

[@livesimple-ub9qd]

His son Mike Awk is also great!

[@mortalhordewarrior9285]

In all seriousness, I like this video. I think you should also look into loose aggressive players. If you're sorting thru tables by large pot sizes, you're bound to find at least one of these players. Like Mike, they open way too many hands preflop, call a lot, limp a lot... but they also 3bet too often, bet flop turn river too often and with massive sizing. They 4 bet jam with pocket 4's or K9s. IMO even better player type than the stereotypical loose passive fish.

[@samuraijack1371]

This type is a rarity and they usually go broke real fast

[@jeffshackleford3152]

​@@samuraijack1371especially online

[@mortalhordewarrior9285]

​@@samuraijack1371perhaps. I play on America's cardroom and despite the fear of GTO bots running rampant, I find no shortage of loose aggro players to take advantage of. I've even been collecting a spreadsheet of the player names and times of day I find them on

[@CallMeKap_]

19:27 Considering how well Mike's range interacts with so many boards, and the main punishment from his loose passive play pre while in position shld be to get 3bet more from the blinds... lets say you're at a typical 1/3 or 2/5 game and the two players to your left dont 3bet squeeze appropriately, seems like it'd make sense to widen your button calling range, right?

[@joserivas7798]

this is great! plese make another explanation video aggainst unbalanced players or something like that

[@jeffshackleford3152]

Stations are unbalanced, you would need to specify what type of unbalance you want to see the exploits for.

[@GEORGEWASHINGTON-pf8ns]

THANK YOU

[@nesterzhzhot]

Great video 🎉

[@MaxerMax]

I think we actually shouldn't be betting so big so often. Players like Mike aren't raising their entire value range. This type of player is very likely to have a reasonable number of traps, which will lower our polarization advantage, which I think is going to change our volume. I would be interested in seeing whether the solver prefers smaller bets or less bets when we give Mike more traps. I'm guessing we'll mostly just size down and maybe check back a bit more with our 2nd pair type hands

[@GlenFrieden]

I have a theoretical concern with this that maybe you can help me with. When you "nodelock" Mike's flop behavior and conclude that, for example on a 974 monotone flop he's calling way too wide and we can therefore be more aggressive (GTO wizard says we bet our range), because Mike will be putting money into the pot only to fold on later streets - is GTO wizard assuming that he will play a GTO strategy on later streets? Because of course we know he won't! I guess I just don't understand how the nodelocking feature works in a context like this. I'm concerned because I think that intuitively, I think increasing bluffing frequency against a player who is under-folding is often a bad idea... In my experience playing against Mike, the issue is not just that he over-calls on flops but that he then keeps calling you down

[@karthage3637]

But how does it affect our preflop strategy ?

[@sEnz8502]

I would entertain Mike anytime pls do a video on how to punish maniac

[@sousaom]

Hello.. question: When I am studying, in the solutions, the bet sizes appear in bbs. For example, Pot 5.5bbs, appears: bet 1.8, bet 2.75, bet 4.4 and bet 6.9. How can I change it to percentage? Thanks

[@ninopoker]

Go to the settings

[@MrCguy24]

the video quality is so high i cant render the youtube page my mouse is disappearing

[@martinleithe8251]

On T96.hj vs BB I have usually just Rangebet between 20-30% size. I don't feel like Mike is punishing that with enough raises to put pressure on hands I got with equity. It's more common I see Call. Check check turn, han Mike fires river pretty honest, and I get to realize max value with a hand like A6s,K9s, AKo.... It would be really tricky to meet Raises from a passive player with those holdings.. Do you think it's a big mistake to Range bet T96? is it intuitive how to exploit me for doing it if I play like that against pro's?

[@jeffshackleford3152]

You may get away with it a couple times against better players but in general, yes they will punish it. If they don't see you showdown a hand, then they may just raise your flop c bet to see what happens.

[@michaelgeiser5693]

I feel attacked.

[@gsoesi1]

I can‘t imagine mike folding a set after raising the flop on a monotone board 50BB deep 😅

[@dsizzle49]

Great video but i took it personally.

[@vincenzofullone8628]

Its not possible subtitle in french or other languages in 2024. With I.A. with all material at your dispositions???

[@martinleithe8251]

10:00 - My exploit here aswell against mike has always been 20-33% bet. while against better opponents I'm more into Big bets and checks.. Would love to hear why 50% is better, or is it kindoff the same EV?. Does it has anything to do with the pricing given to all the gutshots? :)

[@jeffshackleford3152]

Idk why the solver would choose that but I know why I would choose that. If you bet a bit larger and your opponent is a station, when their draw hands brick ( which is quite a bit ) they will very likely fold. A lot of these stationy passive players ( from what I have noticed ) will float the flop and fold turn if they have any sort of gut shot or redraw to a flush or something like that. I not really like a GTO solver nerd, so I have not necessarily worked on this strategy in the solver, I just kind of know what works and what doesn't. I do also know that a lot of them will float flop with anything that has remotely connected with the board and that almost every single time I have not made them pay for the turn card, I regret it. The above has mostly been what I have noticed in a lot of passive players and some of the leaks I had to plug being a former station myself. I will also say I am at best a decent player, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

[@johnnyblackrants7625]

A lot of it is that you’re winning on later streets. If you’re beating Mike for 5% or the pot on later streets, even when called, you want the pot to be larger.

[@johnnyblackrants7625]

5% of* the pot

[@jeffshackleford3152]

@@johnnyblackrants7625 what are you asking?

[@mareksvacina6928]

80 passive players disliked this video.

[@erdemtatar5583]

bol şans

[@boiisheesh6062]

Algo comment :)) 🎈

[@shivambansal9647]

I have always liked watching videos by GTO Wizard but this is such a flawed way of showing an exploit for the AA6r in my opinion which is in no way instructive. When OOP villian raises all of his strong hands (literally all of his Ax) on the flop, IP is purely using a big size because of the future fold equity. On the turn, OOP villian wouldn't have any strong hands whatsoever (as he's raising literally all of his Ax) but IP would, so IP would leverage that by betting almost all of his bluffs on the turn and river, making the bluffs/trash hands almost a value bet on the flop. The inelasticity of the OOP villian is NOT the only reason why that big size is being used always (apart from the fact that no fish is so inelastic on AA6). This is in no way the case in reality as in reality, the OOP 'passive' opponent would still have many of the strongest hands on the turn which he wouldn't raise on the flop to 'keep his opponent in' & 'let him bluff off' although he will also have hands which were supposed to be folded. The strategy of the solver would be a entirely different against a real extremely 'passive' fish. Passive also means that he wouldn't raise much meaning he would't raise many good hands also. I know the person creating the video doesn't want to overcomplicate the video by overcomplicating the sim/node-lock and wants to keep it simple, but this exploit of betting almost your entire range FOR A BIG SIZE is not at all helpful in any way. The J105 example through extreme, is much more illustrative and helps show a point

[@motokisano9827]

I lost all my money against calling stations

[@thenosa87]

Thanks I used your tips to play with my sisters in strip poker

[@SuperJancii]

I dont think they defend Q4o and trash like this, a lot of older fish fold this.

[@iuoi-bd3gx]

12:3 Tight Players have "so much trash in their hands" & "much garbage which he shouldnt call preflop" --- isnt that the opposite of tight?

[@faismasterx]

It is. Most of this analysis is overkill and doesn't apply in the real world.

[@kezman82a]

Tight players? He is talking about passive players..

[@jeffshackleford3152]

​@@kezman82ayes but those are 2 completely different things. Tight vs loose refers to range Passive vs aggressive refers to actions by player. These are separate things even though we use the terms LAG and TAG. The two different words have different meanings when referring to a player.

[@iuoi-bd3gx]

thanks for the clarification and explanation@@jeffshackleford3152

[@kezman82a]

@@jeffshackleford3152 Yes? Maybe you missunderstod me or I missunderstand you. I just told the guy with the comment that this video is not about tight players. Its about passive players. Vs punchingbag (as Uri Peleg like to call them) the solver often rangebet b50 because punchingbags dont xr enough to deny our equity.

[@JS-lc4kg]

congrats on killing the great game. huge contribution

[@TheMrRodrigao]

How to punish tight players pleaasssee 🤌Great content!!