Exploiting weak opponents
Original by Tagwandler
Instruduction
„When you’re really on your game, you can look your opponent in the eye, and you know if you got him - or you know if he’s got you.” (Doyle Brunson)
In online poker we don't have the chance to look our opponents into the eye to read the strength of his hand. Nevertheless depends our optimal play according to the knowledge we have of our opponents play to shrink the handrange he has.
Besides the stats we have it is very useful to know the weak spots he might have to exploit them as good as possible.
This weeks topic is about this exploitive play.
Hand 1
0.50/1.00 Fixed-Limit Hold'em (6 handed)
Preflop: Hero is BB with K♥, T♥
3 folds, BU raises, SB folds, Hero calls.
Flop: (4.50 SB) 6♣, 3♥, 3♠ (2 players)
Hero checks, BU bets, Hero calls.
Turn: (3.25 BB) K♦ (2 players)
Hero checks, BU checks.
River: (3.25 BB) T♦ (2 players)
Hero bets, BU calls.
Final Pot: 5.25 BB
Hero shows [ K♥, T♥ ]
BU shows [ A♠, T♠ ]
In the first hand Hero is defending his big blind against a stealraise from the button.
Hero just joined the table and the button is unknown so we give him a standard open raising range (ORC etc.) which makes us defend our big blind passively.
We missed the flop. All we have are two overcards to the board and a backdoor flushdraw. Nevertheless we are often enough ahead against buttons open raising range so we decide to continue in the hand. The board is not very scary so we don't have a lot fold equity so we stay passive.
On the turn we hit the K and improve to a toppair. Now we are far ahead on average against buttons steal range and we need to think about the best value play.
Hero decides to check/raise because the pot is still rather small and button has nearly never more than 3 outs to improve.
Maybe villain uses the K as a opportunity to scare us out of the pot. He may do this with a pocketpair or A-high to additionally protect against 6 outs on our side (We were passive so he might see hisself still ahead.).
Unfortunatly villain checks the turn behind.
The river gives us a twopair but we would have made a valuebet on the river anyway.
Villains calls the bet to sow us ATs for a 2nd pair.
What do we learn from this hands and how should we adept in the future against him?
At first please notice that one hands isn't enough to give us a complete read about him but we have a first clue that he is not able to judge his hand strength accordinly to the board structure and that he is too passive on the turn.
If the read gets 'real' then we should make to adjustments in our play against this opponent:
1.) We can continue on the flop with weaker hands. When we have a close decision on the flop against this opponent we are able to call with even weak hands because we may see two cards for 1 small bet to imporve which means that we can stay in the hand even call with bad odds.
2.) If villain doesn't make turn bets with weak hand or a bluff on scarecards we have to give him more credit if he bets the turn.
So if we have a close decision on the turn we should tend to fold.
Hand 2
0.50/1.00 Fixed-Limit Hold'em (6 handed)
Preflop: Hero is BB with 7♠, 5♠
3 folds, BU raises, SB folds, Hero calls.
Flop: (4.50 SB) 9♣, 8♠, 4♣ (2 players)
Hero checks, BU bets, Hero calls.
Turn: (3.25 BB) 6♠ (2 players)
Hero bets, BU raises, Hero 3-bets, BU calls.
River: (9.25 BB) A♦ (2 players)
Hero bets, BU calls.
Final Pot: 11.25 BB
In the seonds sample hand Hero plays against the same opponent from hand 1) and is again in a steal raaise situation. Our hand has no good high card potential but we may hit good flop so we don't have difficult decisions for the play after the flop.
Because we judged our opponent as rather passive our implied odds are lower than on average. On the other hand the playability of our hand increases.
All in all is our hands strong enough to defend in the big blind.
There are two overcards on the flop to our hand and except of a gutshot and a backdoor flushdraw we haven't hit anything. A semibluff is out of queston because the flop is very draw heavy so villain won't give up rarely direct on the flop.
Against aggressive opponents it's better to give up directly because we don't get clean outs so there only a few cards with which we can continue on the turn.
Although we have enough equity against his steal range we are not able to go to a showdown often enough.
Against this opponent the situation changes because we know that he tends to play weak on the turn which means that we sometimes get two cards for 1 small bet.
If villain noticed our check/raise attemp from the previous hand he is even more scared of us which increases the chance to see the river for free.
Altogether we can call this flop against this opponent more loosely.
The turncard is perfect for Hero, we hit the straight. Because of our read that he is able to check behind on the turn we have to bet here ourselves. There are many redraws possible against which we have to protect so we have to prevent him from taking a freecard. Additionally we hold the 2nd nuts so our hand is even strong enough to 3-bet.
Allinall our line is clear: Bet/3-bet turn, valuebet river.
Conclusion
The knowledge of knowing how our opponents tend to play may influence our own line drastically.
This means that taking table reads are a very good spot to have an easier decision when playing in a marginal situation.
So it could be interesting in which spots our opponent plays weak, whe he is aggressive and when he is bluffable. Additionally the read our opponent has from us is important as well.
To gather these information we do not even have to be in the hand. Observing our opponent when we don't have a hand is a good oppotunity to improve the winrate.
How do you exploit your opponent? 
