What is exploitive play?

[SellingtheDrama]

Exploitive play is playing to allow your opponents' mistakes to cause you to profit.

Crude example: Player X always raises on the button if its a limped pot.

Exploitive play: Limp with pocket aces when he has the button, so you can re-raise him later.

Playing with exploitive strategies is pretty automatic/standard at higher levels (I use a TAG base and deviate from it to exploit specific table/player conditions). Looked at as a single hand, an exploitive play will seem weird many times, but generally there's a larger context to justify it.

I suggest not worrying too much about this for now. Focus on developing a good TAG game and profit from that. Once you've mastered that, add in some other plays.

I can't think of any of the books I've read that detail exploitive play in the way that I use it, its been trial and error (much more fun to learn this way).