(I've even noticed this at micro-stakes and low buy-in MTTs)

I do understand that fold-equity is the basis of LAG play.

But some loose players seem to do really well with only 'moderate' aggression (or even slightly passive). But how can they afford to see so many flops without relying on fold-equity?

For example, a professional whose book I'm reading is very successful. He's very loose, but only mildly aggressive (not nearly as aggressive / bluffing as most LAGs). He plays a modified small-ball style. Also, he said that he's very disciplined about pot-odds vs. his hand-equity, so he's rarely chasing a gutshot, overcards, or a set (yet with overcards I see a massive number of players bluffing or, even worse, chasing without the required 6.8-1 pot-odds).

Comments?

Relying on pot odds is not the way to play the game. To have a strong strategy you want to have those draws in your range so villain has trouble playing against you (although you obviously don't want to be calling the majority of your stack off to get there). If you were to fold all your straight draws because you weren't getting odds, then villain will know you'll never have a straight on the river when it gets there so he can either over bluff or value bet a lot thinner. You can also call earlier streets to look to bluff turn or river.

And when you are betting you have to take into consideration that your chance to win the hand is (equity + fold equity). You also have to consider that you'll be making money when you hit your draws and villain calls a river bet or raise. And not only all that, but you want to be bluffing so that players can't adjust to you by just tightening their calls against you if you were to be rarely bluffing. And draws or overcards with backdoors make the best candidate for bluffing hands.

Also being loose preflop is often a good strategy because we take down the blinds a lot and having a post flop edge against weaker player is a factor. If we flop trips with our hand we have more implied odds against a fish/rec rather than a regular.

Whatever book you are reading you should put it down now. Sounds like it's wrote by some MTT donk from a decade ago.

You are probably right...then again he probably knows the difference between a set and trips

Entire concept here is quite poorly conveyed. Pot odds and stuff is certainly important, but you can't simply apply pot odds to your hand without considering ranges and texture.

Just curious which "professional's" book you were reading.

To answer the title:

It's because good players will correctly recognize that bad loose passive players in the blinds make it profitable to raise with drawing hands weaker than most would consider standard for the opener's position. This is because passive players give lots of free cards. The gain isn't in bluffing them postflop, but instead the gain is in the equity we get to realize for free. Then we get to hit big hands cheaply and make bets with big equity. This means big profits.

This is only true vs players that fold too much. This effect is overrated imo.

They see the flop cheaply, but only play big pots with big hands and big draws. That's basically Negreanu's definition of smallball, and it's pretty much defined top-level tournament play for more than 10 years. (Players that were described as "LAGs" in 2010 would be "typical regs" in 2017).
You can call (or raise) 2.5bb pre-flop quite often and then fold on bad flops, if occasionally you win a whole stack when you get a good board.
Bad players tend to play even looser pre-flop, and don't win often enough post-flop to make up for all their pre-flop calls. Nits, by contrast, are too tight pre-flop, so don't put themselves in enough to situations to acculumate chips.

I'd ask which players, but I'll just say that some of these people you may have in mind aren't that good and are not the best people to mimic or learn from

OP here.
Thanks for all the insightful replies, they're really good.

I prefer not to name the book or author because I don't want to insult him/her. But you're correct: it's a pre-2010 book so probably not many people are reading it and being mislead. BTW it's not a 2+2 book.

what

If what was written in 2010 and it is outdated, which it probably is as pretty much any book from that period, don't you think people should at least know about it? Not telling is insulting people who might read it and lose money as a result don't you think? The author himself probably knows it himself and it's not embarrassing because poker is a very quickly progressing game and it's no insult to call something that is outdated outdated.

On top some people might actually have read the book and you could have interpreted it incorrectly or have taken it out of context.