Poker Psychology - Recognize Player Styles

The style of a play refers to a pattern of actions made by a player. There are two basic style dimensions: passive aggressive and loose tight. These two dimensions create 4 general styles.
If we scale the dimensions in a square where 1 is very loose and 9 is very tight as well as 1 for very passive and 9 for very aggressive, the corners of the square represent the most extreme types of players, very loose/tight and very passive/aggressive. Of course, most of the players are located somewhere in the middle of the square. First, I’ll explain how to recognize the style and in my next post I’ll explain how to play against these extremes. You should adjust your game according to the type of player you’re playing with.

The player types:

The Calling Station – the loose passive player. We call a player a ‘calling station’ if he tends to check and call a lot and rarely bets or raises. This is the worst possible strategy in Texas Holdem. In Texas Holdem you should be patient and fold many of your starting hands, and you should play aggressively when actually playing a hand. Otherwise, by checking and calling you are in a constant chase for your cards and when they come and you bet no one is paying you.

The Maniac – the loose aggressive player. The maniac tends to play many hands and plays them aggressively. He takes many risks, bluffing even when chances are he’ll get called. Sometimes he over-bets, and usually it takes less than a minute to spot this kind of player.

The Rock – the tight passive player. He doesn’t play many hands but when he does, you should know he has a very strong hand and should usually fold. These players have a lot of patience, hate risk, and can sometimes sit without playing for an hour.

The Winner – the tight aggressive player. This is the best style for playing Texas Holdem. It’s difficult to adopt, but once you do, you will start winning. The tight aggressive player picks his hands selectively, but when playing those hands he plays aggressively. Betting and raising are usually the best actions to take. By doing so, you increase your chances of winning the number of pots, and when you do, the pots are larger. On the other hand, some of your losses would be higher; therefore you mustn’t be in many pots when playing aggressively and should especially be careful of hands that tend to be second best, like AJ for example.