Are you winning more online poker games than you lose, but leaving too much money on the table? Consider that your poker strategy may be a little too pure for your own profit. Players who stick to GTO poker often lose out on money they could make by exploiting the mistakes that weaker players make against them. The way to correct this is to identify and exploit those weaknesses by adjusting your play to target them. Keep reading to find out how.

What Is Exploitative Poker Strategy?

This type of poker strategy is all about identifying your opponents’ weaknesses and using them to your advantage. To do this, you need to pay close attention to your opponents’ poker playing style both preflop and postflop. Once you’ve identified the patterns that make their play predictable, you can adjust your play to target them.

Say your poker opponent doesn’t defend the blinds enough. You can exploit this flaw by raising more often. If a player folds to 3-bets more than they should, it’s a signal to bluff more frequently than is usually advisable. Maybe you know someone who never c-bets unless they hit their flop. Basically they’re flashing a light at you that says “fold.”

Another potential situation: you’re on fifth street, holding the nuts, and there are four cards of the same suit on the board. Theoretically, this spot calls for a small bet, in hopes a weaker opponent will call. But it just so happens you know the specific player you’re up against on this occasion thinks of themselves as a great bluff-catcher, and calls much too often as a result. This is an invitation to go all in. If they call, as they usually do, you’ll take home a much bigger pot than if you played ABC poker.

To sum it up: Exploitative strategy means playing the player in addition to working the poker math. It’s especially effective against players who lack a solid grasp of poker theory – the types you’ll frequently encounter at lower-stakes tables.

Identifying Weaknesses in Opponents

Exploitative poker strategy adds another layer to multi-level thinking in poker. At the same time that you’re calculating your odds, outs, and expected value in poker, you’re scanning your poker opponents for weaknesses, so you can categorize them according to player type and exploit them accordingly. To do this, you need to focus on two main patterns:

Hand Selection

To sniff out weakness, pay attention to your opponent’s range. Tight players, for instance, have a limited starting hand range. Typically, they won’t enter a hand without premium holdings, and they’ll fold over and over until they feel they have enough of an advantage to enter the pot.

Loose players, on the other hand, will play a broad range of hands, enter more pots, take more risks, and play more hands overall. They’re hoping for lucky flops and looking to outplay their opponents on later streets.

If a player is leaning towards extreme looseness or tightness, pay attention. Someone who plays less than 9% of their hands will not only lose out on profit, but will save you money if you overfold to them. Someone who plays more than 55% of hands is too loose for their own good, and will lose money over time – especially if you hone in on their particular faults.

Betting Patterns

Aggressive or passive betting patterns will tell you a great deal about a player. A passive poker player is content to check and call just to see how the hand pans out. They may avoid losing big, but they’ll seldom win large pots. An aggressive poker player is willing to take the initiative, control the hand, and pile on the pressure. They’ll bet and raise to force the pace and put their opponents on the spot, often pressuring them into folding. As a result, you can exploit a passive player’s weakness simply by adopting an aggressive style – provided, naturally, that you know the ABCs of poker strategy.

When you’re up against aggressive opponents, don’t be afraid – their strength can often be their weakness, too. Players who display too much aggression in an unbalanced way will play too many hands, and bet, call, and – above all – bluff in poker too frequently. If you catch them with a stronger hand, you can take their money.

When to Deviate from Game Theory Optimal (GTO)

There’s a lot of talk about exploitative vs GTO poker play, but in reality, they’re variations on the same theme. GTO poker strategy is all about making the most mathematically optimal plays. The closer you are to perfect GTO poker, the greater your advantage against less sophisticated players. In other words, as a GTO player, you’re automatically exploiting your opponents’ mistakes. 

But are you making as much money as you could be? The truth is that pure GTO strategy is best used against high-level opponents who are unlikely to deviate from GTO themselves. To make money from less skilled players, you need to actively exploit their specific weaknesses to maximize your profits from them as individuals.

Of course, to exploit an opponent, you really need accurate insight into their actual weaknesses, rather than flaws you imagine them to have. It can be obvious that a player never bluffs on the river (so if they check-raise, fold), or bluffs way too often (so you can call them down with marginal hands). The problems arise when you think you’ve got your opponent made, but you’ve made the wrong assumption. You could rapidly get demolished.

A reasonable compromise between GTO and exploitative poker strategy is to walk the line between them. Play the best GTO poker you can while paying close attention to your opponent. If you think they’re making specific mistakes against you, adjust your play experimentally, without making it too obvious. If you identify an exploitable pattern, lock and load.

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