A Tight-Passive Nightmare

I`ve just finished the K9 Money Tour game at PitBull Poker. I ended up finishing in 6th which all things considered was a great result but more on that later. Now the K9 Freeroll Tour has its fair share of donkeys and bad players but the Money Tour has short fields of solid players. To put it into perspective the Money Tour games take almost as long as the freerolls to play and generally have less than 20 runners.

Tonights has just finished and took 2 3/4 hours. So it was a real surprise to see a truly awful player sat at the table, it was even more surprising that he was chip-leader for most of the game. Well I hear you ask, if he was such a bad player how did he accumulate all those chips. Certainly he had some luck but I put it down to the way he played his hands. To give an example (in fact this was the hand that confirmed his Tight-Passive style to me);

Blinds were 50/100

He was in early position (4,000 chips) UTG or UTG+1 he flat calls. Table folds round to me on the button. I only have 1,200 chips and I have KQos, now I could raise but I figure I`d rather see the flop cheaply. SB calls and BB checks.

Flop Qd x Ad

Both the blinds check, he bets the minimum 100. I call, I figure maybe he has ace rag or 2 diamonds. Both the blinds fold. The turn is another diamond and he checks, is he trapping or is he as nervous as I am? No way am I getting check-raised so I check too. River brings the Kd which is both pleasing and worrying at the same time. It gives me 2 pair but it also makes the flush more likely. He checks and I`m left trying to decide wether to bet or not. If he doesn`t have the flush and I bet he should fold, however I figure that if he doesn`t have the flush I`ve won anyway so I check.

WRONG.

I`m astounded when he turns over AQos giving him a higher 2 pair. Now I`m happy to admit that I didn`t play this hand very well. I also accept that AQos isn`t the strongest hand in the world but to flat call with it even in early position seems an awful play to me even though he got away with it.

Anyway to further justify my opinion he was a bad player a while later he again makes his flat call on my BB, I have 8d 4d flop comes A x x I check, he checks, turn is an 8 so I fire off a minimum bet to see if maybe he has slowplayed an ace, he calls. River is another 8. Now with betting on the turn I figure he might suss out I have trips if I bet strongly so I make another minmum raise. He comes right back over the top at me raising me 800 of my 825 chips. I`ve no idea what stopped me pushing the all-in but I flat called. Of course he had the case 8 in his hand with a J kicker. Just then the table breaks and we are down to the last 10.

So final table I have 25 chips and I`m all-in on the SB. 4-5 in my hand I spike a 5 on the river and triple up. Next hand AA I flop a full-house, up to 275 chips. A few hands later JJ I`m looking in real trouble with him and another playing betting even though I`m all-in. River brings me another full-house up to 1275 chips. On my SB AA again, fabled blind thief MurryTheCat raises me and I go over the top all-in. He calls and shows 44. The rockets hold and I`m up to 2750 chips. All this from the 25 chips he left me. This is why I was very pleased with 6th place. This is why he was a bad player. From arriving with 25 chips I ended up seeing off four other players.

His tactics worked a while longer, he took out another player or two but after a while the rest of the table caught onto him. Irrespective of his initial bet, if he raised on the flop he had a good piece of it. His final result a deserved bubble 4th place.

The moral of the story, Tight-Passive may work for a while but eventually the good players will catch onto you and then you`re just chum in the water.