Floating/reverse floating

DISCLAIMER: Not for stakes 25nl and below. 25NLers might be able to take something away from this to use at the tables. For 10NL and below, valuebet valuebet valuebet and save the FPS for higher stakes.

Floating - Calling with a weaker hand/draw with intention of taking the pot away on a later street. Most often done in position.

Reverse floating - Floating out of position, usually applies in a Late position vs Blinds scenario

Why do we need it?

Hands are quite hard to make and often you’re going to be in an air vs relative air battle. In addition, you’ll see people cbet flops too much with hands that should/can be pot controlling. (Cbetting too much at the micros is NOT a leak if you plan on barreling good turns and rivers). Players will cbet 77 on K5x and then check back turn for “pot control” and then fold to a river lead. Vs some people that is a valid and good line. Vs others, checking back can be better.

When I sweat people I often see them 3bet hands like KQ/KJ/AT blinds vs LP. I’m not saying that it’s wrong, but these hands can be played profitably from the blinds without having to 3bet them (given that BB isn’t a squeeze monkey). If BB is a squeeze monkey, then 3betting from the SB is fine. These hands have postflop value and high card value and you’ll often see threads where “I flop tp in a 3bet pot and don’t know what to do”. Then you ask OP if they were 3betting preflop for value or not and they don’t really know. Unless villain is flatting all your 3bets, you can’t really know for sure and the average [good] player’s 3bet flatting range 100 deep will have you dominated and they’ll end up folding everything that you dominate pre.

Reverse floating

Good boards to do it on, in order of best to worst

Axxr/Kxxr/Qxxr

Why?

When you x/c on an Axxr board, especially oop, you rep Ax quite well. Since the board is A high and rainbow, there are less draws and no overcards for your opponent to barrel. When you x/c on a Kxx board, you rep Kx well. The only overcard is an Ace. When you x/c on a Qxx board, you rep Qx well. Ect.

Lead rivers often if the turn is checked through without relative SDV (or if you want to conceal your hand).

Hands to float with?

You can float with pocketpairs or cards with some connection to the board and some equity/chance to improve. Such as JTss AQxdds with the backdoor flushdraw. Or 78ss on K62scc again with the backdoor flushdraw. Having backdoor equity is always good. When you float pocketpairs on these boards, you’re basically using the high card on the board to get to showdown since you won’t get barreled often. Turning your small pp into a bluff on the river if the turn checks through so that you don’t have to show your hand (and that you’re capable of reverse floating) is fine. On Qxx/Kxx boards, you can float with Ax(AT/AJ) type hands for the over and possibly a gutshot.

Boards that are NOT good to reverse float would be ones that you are prone to getting barreled on. Such as 67Tssx/68Jssx and other middling connected/twotone boards. Reason being that there are more draws and overcards and you will get barreled if villain is semi competent. That and a lot of you guys NEVER EVER SLOWPLAY your SETS on connected boards because you’re scared of the board running out bad. As a side note, if you don’t protect your calling range with sets on these boards, you’re going to get barreled to kingdom come when you move up. Just something to keep in mind.

Of course all of this goes out of the window if villain is a One-pump-chump. Vs Mr. One pump, you can float wide and if you get double barreled you can happily muck your hand.

The Villains you choose to float/reverse float will be just as important as the boards you choose to do so. If villain is just a maniac barrel monkey, you will want to make your flop calling range stronger and just call down with TP+ instead of floating and getting tricky. So instead of reverse floating 56ss on A58ccs, you’ll want to have a hand like AT. It is important to pick up reads on your opponents barreling tendencies, whether they always barrel draws on the turn but give up rivers, or if they check back turns. Adjust accordingly (call down pairs lighter ott if they always barrel draws ott, river action depends on whether or not they fire brick rivers).

Some villains with WTSD of ~30%+ will never fold their hand if they pot control the turn, ie if they have KQ and they cbet AKx (lol), check turn and then you lead river with your mid pp and they snap it off because they pot controlled turn. Vs these guys don’t reverse float garbage, just flat Ax and lead rivers or c/f your mid pp OTR because you have some SDV vs their river checking range.

The games just got that much harder.

Or I just made everyone a cbet calling station.

Hope this was somewhat informational and good luck at the tables.

where is spraggy's image about. that newspaper article photoshop. need to post it

jk. is a interesting read. however i find it hard to get villain's turn cbet% to merge and a solid read on their barreling frequencies to use this super affectivly.

mostly because you would need a hand to go to SD that shows what he barrels and doesnt. or if he does or doesnt barrel on good or bad boards. how do you usually get these reads?

do you have a turn c/r% in case villain is a barrel monkey. or depending on the board texture. this may be pretty bad because the boards should be rainbow boards and dry.

Posting itt to remind myself to read later. Should be good.

3th. posting to remind myself to read.

Great post, thank you Sharkbait.

Awesome post Sharkbait.

I am looking forward to Jim Mick's pooh bah post more, don't really remember this guy!

I kid sir, I will read later and misapply your concepts over the weekend.

Nice job doing this.

waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaait this isnt trolling, wtf is up bait.

fwiw I always thought that calling cbets oop, hoping that villain checks back turn and folds to river bet is called random button clicking, and you give it such a fancy name, phew.

this works even better on and < 10nl, cuz people don't know how to barrel properly, so there are more cbet-and-give-up regs than higher imo. not that i do it very often, but there are situations where u can get away with it.

thanks, Sharkbait tho, nice read.

nice post sir.

I'd like to add that floating with like KQ or AQ on semiconnected, say 8 or 9 high boards is cool vs barrel happy oppenents bc the cards they will barrel are the cards that actually hit you and you can safely call down and there are still some cards that hit your perceived range hard and will force them to shut down. For example if you hold AsQx on 954ss after defending or flatting OTB, they will barrel off on Q or A turns and often shut down on 6,7,8 turns bc those give you a lot of pair+draws, sets, 2pair etc. Again backdoor equity is cool here just so we can sometimes turn our hand into a c-r bluff or c/c (raise or call when IP) again when we turn fd. Ofc these are often spots where raising or check-raising flop is fine as well.

hi,

i'm new to 6max and quite bad at poker, so please don't flame me too much

loved the post as it's a spot i find myself with and struggle quite a lot. don't like 3betting hands like 77-TT or trouble hands like KJ, KQo, QJ etc... from the blinds. I find myself calling them a bit too much and not knowing what to do OOP.

anyway, i have a few questions.

are we always talking about checking the turn waiting for a a check back so we can barrel the river? don't you like c/c on the flop and firing the turn? if not, why?

thankyou, great post!

nice post, i've allready reverse floatet from time to time without knowing that there is a term for this this works great against villains who cbet to much and give up on the turn, ldo

a question for OP, does the sizing on the river matter much? what kind of betsize would you suggest?

c/c flop lead turn is really really bad in the scenarios op stated

also op is a fish, and most likely gay

Awesome post. Not much else to say really. Thanks OP.

fyp

I also love how he said to ubbv players to essentially c/c capped range oop, with pretty much exact/weaker range that we rep, hoping that villain is retarded and cant barrel ever and is worried about games getting harder.



edit: what Im saying is that most decent regs will barrel the **** out of Kxx boards if you flat their LP open. They have sets, AK in their range, you can only occasionaly show up with like KQ, KJ is essentially a herocall/bluffcatcher to the river bet (assuming brick turn/river) (and if KJ isnt pure bluffcatcher, that implies aggro dynamic, which means that villain is barreling a lot, which means that c/c BS hands oop is retarded and justifies his barreling). You can also show up with button clicking BD equity and most importantly: a lot of regs play like midpairs by flatting pre and c/c second pair. Hence there is ******** of fold equity for villain to be had ott/otr, hence even further weakening our range isnt exactly smart.