Only in games where I can overbet the pot on the turn and make them wonder if my range was really capped when I just call. Either that or like 1.75x pot open shove the river because... make them have the tough choices.

In limit, is there such a word as float?

+1

Somebody post the Gavin Smith flat calling video

yes, there is, but only in a specific context (either in the bb in a blind war after calling a raise from the sb and then continuing on a flop with nothing w/ the intention of taking the pot away later or in the sb if you complete/call or raise/call and then k/c with the intention of taking the pot away later. or i guess in some other spots i haven't mentioned where you are calling a bet on the flop with nothing with the intention of taking the pot away later, but those are super rare when it's not in the blinds).

but it has nothing to do with how the poster used it, thus the inigo montoya reference

lol. nah. gotta be with no hope with the intention of taking the pot away on a later street. i can only think of blind war examples at the moment, but there may be others.

bad peels still have some equity

I love floating tight fish. The way that guy in this thread used it wasnt even close to correct though. Thats all.

I love that the guys who have been around long enough to know the origin of the word "float" are arguing that its original usage is completely incorrect

A floater was originally someone who cold called preflop first in (in limit hold'em) with the intention of outplaying you on later streets. The official original definition may have had something about an Asian female, possibly with pink hair.

touche! selective memory apparently. you are correct. now that i think about it, it does indeed go back (as far as i can remember) to those 6m games on crypto in 2004-2006 from what i can recall. i don't remember pink haired asian females lol, but i do recall stox/nyplayer looking at floating as a possible line against a few of those high limit crushers. original definition wins out (calling two cold in position with the goal of winning the pot later); HOWEVER, in my defense, it was NEVER intended to be used with atc. the atc inclusion made me think of how it came to be used in blind battles.

i.e. sb opens 97s, bb 3bs. flop is T32rb. sb k/c with the intention of k/r'ing some turns for whatever reason he thinks that line will work. that is an atc type float. that's opposed to the original definition which was used for hands like 98s or j9s or the like in position that were good enough against a super agro range but not worth a 3bet.

I think you misread my post, perhaps due to it being unclear. Sure, floating is taking a card with outs (or proper odds ) intending to steal later. You hear NL players talking about it. In limit, when's the last time in the last decade a decent player talked about pure floating as a standard play and other good players agreed? I can't think of one. Hence, that word, i don't think it means... as floating in limit isn't really a thing. People semi bluff in limit. If you carry hands forward with no future equity, you'd overbluff a ton if you randomly pull hopeless hands to later streets intending to bluff, while making peels with little equity. That is the problem with atc peel and bluffing.

Apologies in advance for JL style phone posting.

Definitely.

Even in no limit, floating out of position is a recipe for disaster. In position vs weak tight tags in a no limit game is when you want to float.

Now, if you wanted to say this about coldcalling I could agree: There may be a group of hands that has a shortage of realizable equity, but is nonetheless profitable when played as a call preflop due to dead money, position, and or implied odds.

Does that mean that I think calling something like 86s readless first in after a raise in even the best of situations is good limit holdem strategy? Probably not. I'd never coldcall that hand from any position readless. However, I played a decent number of hands coldcalling this range in the small blind vs overaggressive buttons and won .8 bets/100 hands for over 30k hands strictly gamestarting limit holdem online:

button raises, I called in the small blind with this range when I had a standard tight tag to my left:

22-44, A2s-A6s, K4s-K9s, Q9s, QTs, J9s, T8s, T9s, 97s, 98s, 87s. So around 100 combos out of 1326 preflop combos for a ~7.5% coldcalling frequency. I'm still not convinced that this either helped or hurt my winrate.

my 2 cents.

I was going to do a post on this. I don't do this-- I 3-bet or fold just like I am supposed to (at least in a normal 1-2/2-4/4-8 structure). But if there's any limit hold 'em shibboleth that is suspect, it's this one. There are simply plenty of hands that play horribly when 3-bet out of position but which are fine in a 3-way pot putting in 1/4 of the money. Indeed, the logic for doing this is very similar to the "I don't cap 3 ways" that is very popular here. (And just like with not capping 3 ways, you can put some strong hands into your calling range to check-raise if you wish to. If the button c-bets 100 percent, that should be a very workable strategy.)

On the floating thing, I actually did a screed against floating in limit in 2010 or so-- it probably can be tracked down in the micro stakes archives. But yeah, don't float.

Honestly, even in no limit, most players who do float, float too much. Calling your entire range pre-flop in position just because the raiser is weak-tight seems like a recipe for burning up some money long term. Would seem much better to selectively float when you have a decent enough hand to hit some of the time.

i'm not sure how much you played during 2006-2009ish online but there were a few very tough players playing 6m and it was a nightmare to play against them b/c they'd cc in position (not really and it seems your'e talking about sb action here. the floating came from late position cold calling a first in raise) and they have a very balanced call/raise flop/turn strategy. this was tough to play against.

I didn't mean to suggest that, but coldcalling stuff preflop in position is a good start to the hand in no limit with stuff like AJo and T9s and the like, depending on the opener's range.

Also, if there's one play in no limit that identifies a weak tight player, it would be a high cbet flop, check fold turn frequency, which is exactly the leak that floating exploits.

I kind of disagree with this:

But I've only played no limit online in the past few years. I'm not sure which games you're referring to but this hasn't been my experience.

My no limit experience is mostly live $500 games here in California. And in those games, the floating is ridiculous and predictable (cold cold pre-flop with a 75 percent to 100 percent range, call flop bet, bet if checked to on the turn). If people are doing a better job of it in other games, more power to them.

And yes, it definitely targets weak-tight players. But even then, you can't do it with 100 percent of your range. As I said, it's way too obvious.

Ok I agree with that 100%.

I always thought floating was after the flop and was calling with no hand in position and making a move later. Never knew it stemmed from pre flop play. You learn something new everyday. This is one of those things.

To be clear, it doesn't have to.

For instance, let's say you are posting a kill in the CO. A weak tight player or a nitty TAG raises your kill in middle position, and you call with 76 suited. Then the blinds fold.

At that point you could decide, given your opponent and her range, and the fact that you are heads up in position, that you might adopt a floating strategy on some flops that don't hit the opponent's range and hit yours (even if your actual hand misses). That's a board-specific and opponent-specific judgment and may very well be excellent strategy.

What I have observed, and criticize, is a float-happy style where players see an early position raise and start calling incredibly wide in position with the intention of bluffing every turn no matter what's out there. There has to be some situational awareness in floating. (Indeed, this is true of all exploitative poker strategies. "I can outplay this guy postflop" isn't enough-- you have to recognize situations where you actually have enough fold equity to pull this stuff off.)

The thing is that even if your turn bluff works, that doesn't necessarily mean that the play was profitable. Your opponent has to fold the turn often enough to compensate the flop investment and the turn bluff, which is quite unlikely.

Yea but its still a float, even if you dont follow through. Say the flop is low and I call the C-bet with complete air. If really is super tight and fires again on the turn, say a face card or ace, I can obviously fold. I still floated the flop, just hit the ejector seat on the turn.

One line I really like to use in wide range spots is to call flop/turn with a hand that doesn't seem to have correct odds in order to bluff the river if checked to e.g. Sb opens I call 45 in bb. Flop 7J2 bet call. Turn 8 bet call. Notice there are a fair number of turn bluff raises available in my range and also I'll be walling a bunch of decent hands here so adding some float combos makes a ton of sense.


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Obviously this is better than mindlessly floating, but I would also argue that you shouldn't be 100 percent floating on any street. In other words, you shouldn't call 100 percent of your range pre-flop intending to float, shouldn't call 100 percent of your flop range intending to float, etc. If you are going to float, it should be with a portion of your range and backed up by some math.

I've seen even weak tight players adjusting to obvious floaters. So it should be a selective strategy based on your range, your opponent's range, board texture, etc.

Should we agree that a flat call is an attempt to exploit, and thus is vulnerable to be exploited.

I can only think of a very few family pots where a flat call would be +EV versus a raise. It happens so rarely that it is more of a tell than a skilled play.
If a very good player does this he is trapping a much weaker player, or at least inviting them into the hand.
My opinion is that even in both of these scenarios (late position family pot or skill maneuver) the play is slim at best. I only ever do this unless I have been hammering a particular player and need to show them a knife instead of a hammer, just for variety.


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