Let's face it, online poker is getting more difficult. Players are not making the massive mistakes they used to and winrates have been shrinking across the board. The players who make the most money are those that successfully analyze minute details that their opponents do not.

Let me speak to the TAGfish inside every one of you. Your inner TAGfish is completely oblivious to minute details. It is ALWAYS clawing and scratching; begging to influence your decisions no matter who you are. The best poker player in the world has an inner TAGfish, but he has learned to listen to it less often than the rest of us.

Hey TAGfish,
You group together starting hands that look somewhat similarly and analyze them as if they were identical when they are somewhat different. You believe J9s is identical to J8s. You believe 98s is identical to 76s.

Hey TAGfish,
You don't understand what a hand range is. You pretend you do, but you don't. If you actually understand what a hand range is, you have no idea how to determine another player's hand range in any given situation. If you understand how to determine their range, you don't know what to do with it, and only know how to exploit the MOST skewed ranges.

Hey TAGfish,
You don't bet with the 40% of your hand range that has the most equity in a situation where you bet 40% of the time. You probably attempt to "balance your range" in spots that SHOULD NOT BE BALANCED.

Hey TAGfish,
You see players make a particular play at some point and try it later, misapplying it to a completely different situation. You often have no clue what to do once you're forced to make another decision, and go bonkers. You have no overall gameplan, and you make every decision in real time without thinking about the implications that decision will have throughout the hand.

Hey TAGfish,
You don't realize that getting a stack in with AK on a 567 flop has MUCH less equity than gettting a stack in on a 234 flop against all but the strangest hand ranges.

Hey TAGfish,
You don't understand why particular bet sizes are the most profitable in particular situations, and you certainly don't understand the implications of various bet sizes and the adjustments you need to make in the hand.

Hey TAGfish,
You assume that every other player is controlled by their inner TAGfish too.

Hey TAGfish,
You are very good at playing the top and bottom of your hand range, but very bad at playing the middle.

Hey TAGfish,
You make progressively more mistakes the deeper you get into a hand. Your preflop play is generally not mistake ridden. You might not do anything that is extremely exploitable, and you might play tight or loose. Your flop play is marginally worse but still reasonably competent. As you get to the turn and river and the decisions become more difficult and involve more money, you make more costly mistakes.

this fixed like 20 holes in my game

Really good post, but I hope you go deeper with some of these...TAGfish need it spelled out. :-)

Mind elaborating on the ones I quoted?

2p2 has given me a lot. I went from being a losing player to a marginal winner virtually the moment I arrived, and I've gotten DRASTICALLY better over the 2 years I've been here. I have all of you to thank, so hopefully this post can serve to do that for some of you. Obviously this wont directly help your winrate, but I so many people do not understand the mistakes they're making in a general way, and hopefully this will inspire some.

If you have any questions about interpretation or anything else, fire away.

i like it. i hate tagfish. because they take my money when i tilt to them.

***raises hand***

I've been thinking about these last 2 alot lately...much work to do.

[ ] TAGfish can count

If you want to, it would be cool if u could elaborate on these points.

Are you saying most TAGfish don't really understand hand ranges, and even if they do, fail to use that hand range while playing to make optimal decicions (for example, in a spot where a TAGfish has nothing but a villain's range is something like 20% monsters 80% complete crap) and just give up because they have nothing, even though the villain's range can't stand any heat at all? Or conversely, get their money in bad even though they are doing very poorly against a villain's range, just because their hand is seemingly strong?

The stage 1 TAGfish literally does not know what a hand range is. Every time he has a decision to make for a lot of chips, he tries to decide what hand his opponent has and then proceed accordingly.

The stage 2 TAGfish understands that sometimes people have good hands and sometimes have bad hands when they take the same action. They will then take it to the next step often and realize that people who are active are bluffing a lot, and they'll start trying to make some random moves to try to exploit this.

The stage 3 TAGfish understands that if his opponent's range is 90% air and 10% monsters, he should attempt to make a play of some kind. He doesn't understand how to exploit ranges that aren't so horribly skewed, and sometimes he'll make very bad wrong adjustments.

As with everything, there will be varying degrees of everything. Some of you are MUCH more influenced by your TAGfish than others. If these things all apply to you, you're a TAGfish. If none of them do you are not. In between is where it's difficult... ...

How about being a LAGfish? That sounds cooler imo

In my world TAGfish does not mean so much Tight Aggressive Fish as it stands for a particular type of player regardless of preflop stats. I think a TAGfish is someone who has a very loose understanding of the game and concepts, but misapplies them over and over and in the same way as other TAGfish.

Ok this one is pretty tough for me to explain, and I've been trying to put it into words for a WHILE. Imagine a K52 rainbow flop where the cutoff opened for pot preflop and you called on the button. If the cutoff is a TAGfish it is very likely he will bet 100% of his range here and only call a TINY percentage of the time if you make a small raise. When they do call, their range is very skewed towards hands that have a lot of equity. Because of this, raising a large percentage of the time will be extremely profitable. TAGfish don't adjust so if you have a perfectly balanced range here you are burning money INSANE money. I used to think that the most profitable thing to do here was to balance my range. If I was only going to raise 3 hands for value, (22, 55, KK) I would raise exactly that same number of combinations as bluffs. Obviously the ratios vary greatly from player to player, but now there are definitely players you should raise 5x as often with hands worse than KT or K9 than with those better. The way I select those hands is by picking the ones that have the most equity if called. For example, A3 > K8 > 98. Because A3 has 4 times as much equity against a range of (KK+, 55, 22, K5s, K9+), you should be 4x as inclined to raise A3 as 98 here. Many TAGfish do not realize the massive differences between these hands and see both as just a no pair hand.

When you watch a great player recording a video at your stakes, the automatic thing is to try to emulate their play in spots that you recognize. If you see Taylor Caby bluff raise someone with A3 on the K52 flop, you might encounter the same situation with 98 and think they are the same situation and make the same play. The best example of not knowing what to do when you have to face another decision is squeezing preflop and being lost on the flop. If you are going to make aggressive plays, you have to follow through with more aggressive plays. You have to understand what you will be doing in the hand and don't just 3bet preflop and check it down because "he obviously has a tight range so I can't bluff." Obviously this will be true sometimes, but bluffing is really fun!

I have to admit, when I opened this thread I thought it was going to be some guy who had no idea what he was talking about trying to sound cool because he had 2000 posts, but this is succinct and well put... and of course right.

imo.

threads like this make me realize how much i blow and how LITTLE i spend fixing my game

god i suck

Wrschultz,

Well done. Your example with the K52 flop is spot on. Thanks for the time.