x-post. Pooh-bah: Exploiting the fish
04-08-2010
, 01:44 PM
This is a x-post from my post in beginners question forum.
Introduction:
When we began to play we all learned how to play TAG ABC poker. We learned by using hand charts and rigidly followed them and opened certain hands in certain positions. We were told to never bluff at the micros and value-bet our good hands strongly. These simple strategies are enough to beat the micro up to a certain point, but what happens when we move up to 50 NL and small stakes?
We encounter more regs and fewer fish, our good hands aren’t getting paid off as much as they used to and we find ourselves in more tough spot. What are the ways people start combating this? They start getting into leveling wars with the other regs; 3-betting lighter, v-betting thinner (often to thin), 4-bet bluffing etc. Basically people search for a way to beat the other regs to prove to themselves that they are “beating” the level. They want to feel like they are better than the people they regularly play with thinking that this is where the money is made. That is wrong!
I cannot stress enough how this line of thinking is wrong. You aren’t much better than the other regs at your limit and you only have a slight edge at best against them. I’m not saying that regs at 50 NL or small stakes don’t have leaks, they do. They have plenty of leaks and they are hugely exploitable, but so are you. If you had a big edge against the regs you wouldn’t be playing with them, you would have moved up long ago. Just check your database. You aren’t up or down a significant amount against the other good players, more likely you are just trading coolers. So where are you going to get your money from? Well you are going to do what you did to get to your current level, beating up the fish.
There are fish at every level. Don’t think that just because you hit 200 NL there is no fish left and everybody is playing a solid 21/18 style 3-betting just the right amount etc. No, there is still fish at 200 NL and there is fish even at 2kNL (or so I’ve heard, I’ve never played 2k NL). And it is from these players you should be looking to make your moneys. And more importantly you should be looking to get more than your fair share of their money. The other regs are also going to win from these guys, it’s only a matter of time before they are broke. Some fish will redeposit some wont. But they will almost always leave the table when they reach a stop loss, for some it is one BI for others it may be 5 or 6, but the amount of money to be had is always limited. Being the guy who gets the most of the cake should be your goal.
So how are we going to get the most of the fish’s money? It’s simple really, we play more pots with them. In doing so we are going to have to expand on the hands that we normally play. But what hands are should we play against the fish? Well, that really depends on what kind of fish they are. A fish isn’t simply just a fish. He is a player just like everybody else you encounter at the table with weaknesses and strengths. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise to you that different type of fish requires different strategies. In the following I’ll try to describe the best way to play against each different type of fish based on what characterizes each individual stereotype.
The loose-passive guy:
This is your garden variety fish that you have encountered dozens of times in your past. They have pre-flop stats like 37/3 and a very low aggression factor post-flop. If you have made your way through the micros it should be fairly clear to you how to beat these guys; valuebet, valuebet and valuebet. I cannot stress enough how big a mistake it is to not valuebet relentlessly against these guys.
SB in the hand below is a 55/5 and BB is a 46/13
Grabbed by Holdem Manager
NL Holdem $2(BB) Replayer
SB ($199)
BB ($70.17)
UTG ($365)
UTG+1 ($314)
CO ($352)
Hero ($256)
Dealt to Hero K
A
UTG calls $2, fold, fold, Hero raises to $10, SB calls $9, BB calls $8, UTG calls $8
FLOP ($40) 7 J K
SB checks, BB checks, UTG checks, Hero bets $28, SB calls $28, BB calls $28, UTG folds
TURN ($124) 7 J K 5
SB checks, BB checks, Hero bets $62, SB calls $62, BB folds
RIVER ($248) 7 J K 5 Q
SB checks, Hero bets $124, SB calls $98.48
Hero shows K A
(Pre 63%, Flop 79.8%, Turn 72.7%)
SB shows Q 9
(Pre 37%, Flop 20.2%, Turn 27.3%)
Hero wins $441
Against a decent player you might be inclined to check river back. There is pretty much nothing a decent player is calling with that aren’t beating you here. T9 just got there as did KQ. Putting SB on a calling range that we are beating is really, really difficult. Luckily, we don’t have to. All we need to know about this guy is that he calls down with Q9 on board like this and TPTK turns into a valuebet.
A common mistake I have seen in the forums is the misuse of the concept “pot control”. When playing against loose-passive guys you have to throw that concept out the window. Often you see a hand where hero is holding something like KsJs in position on a Kd7h4h board and bets the flop. Villain calls and the turn is 2c. Villain checks and hero checks behind. When asked why he checked turn behind he says something like pot control. This is a huge mistake against these players. You are losing so much value by not going for three streets of value with TPGK. So often is he going to call you down with K9 or just flat call a draw and fold river unimproved. Don’t miss out on that turn bet.
Both the hands discussed above should be fairly standard if you have made your way up through the micros. And I can tell you that most of the other regs at your stake is also going to be able to play these hands against the fish and profit. So this leads me to the opening premise of this post; that in order to win more money from the fish you have to play more hands with them than the other regs.
So what hands are we going to play against them and how? Well, since these guys are playing a ton of hands, you should be able to play a ton of hands against them. You don’t need to have a better starting hand than they have on average, because we have superior post-flop skills. We are going to be paid off from them so often that it more than outweighs any pre-flop disadvantage we have. Unfortunately we aren’t playing these guys heads up (and if you are, congrats, take their money and buy something nice). There are other players at the table so we can’t go overboard in regards to the hands we play lest we lose too much to the other regs at the table. I can’t set forth a specific chart off hands that you can play against these guys with simply because too many other considerations need to be taken.
Obviously we want to be in position so normally we have the blinds to act behind us and they are going to have an impact on how much out of line we can get. But in a vacuum I will say that high-cards are good. Against these players we aren’t as worried about being dominated because their range is so wide. Also suited cards are good. If one of these guys limps in don’t be afraid to iso-raise Q4s from the BTN. I would say that any suited queens, kings or aces should be considered a raise from the BTN against these guys. From the CO you might want to cut some of the suited queens off. A hand like K8o is often also profitable to raise from the BTN. Now, don’t take these hand examples as the gospel but I want you to think about raising a much wider range when isolating these guys.
A thing to keep in mind when deciding what hands to play against these guys, are their post-flop tendencies. Just because you have pegged them as loose-passive isn’t enough to describe the whole story. Some of these guys are playing a very straightforward fit-or-fold type of flop game. If they fold to a c-bet very often a strategy of raise and c-bet ATC should show an immediate profit. Other loose-passive guys are calling everything on the flop. They will float with over, call with gutshots and backdoor draws. It should be clear that against these guys you would be more inclined to show up with A-high than 7-high.
That was a bit about how to exploit the loose-passive player. The other part is what not to do. Against these guys there really isn’t that many things you should watch out for. However, once a loose-passive guy become aggressive, you need to reevaluate. If he raises your bet at any point during the hand you most often need to get the hell out of there. That is it. It is the only don’t against these guys. Not being able to get away from TPTK against them is a huge leak.
Cliffs for the loose-passive guy:
- Valuebet, valuebet, valuebet
- Open up your hand range
- If he shows any aggression, seriously consider dumping any non-nut hands.
The loose guy:
The loose guy, is just that. This player plays to many hands but do otherwise have decent stats. He might be something like 37/22 pre-flop and not much can be said about his post-flop tendencies as they vary to much from player to player.
Whether or not this guy should be classified as a fish is debatable. Or rather whether or not he should be included in this post is debatable. He surely isn’t a player to be feared, but if he has good post-flop skills he might actually be a winner.
Our advantage against these guys should simply be our better hand selection. Once we enter a pot we are generally going to have the best hand. I wouldn’t recommend you guys to go out of you way to play against these guys simply because this will negate our initial advantage. Just play solid poker and you are going to win money from him in the long run. If he is bad post-flop you can start to target him and open up your range as you did with the loose-passive guy.
What you really want to note about this guy is his post-flop tendencies, but I think it is beyond the scope off this post to discuss what they might be and how to adjust to them. That is an entire subject in itself that deserves its own post.
Cliffs for the loose guy:
- Read the text. It is almost in cliff as it is.
The loose-aggressive guy/maniac:
The difference between a LAG-fish and a maniac is a fluid thing. Anyway they will be playing a bunch of hands and come in raising often. They have pre-flop stats in the range of 35+/25+ and the post-flop tendencies are what separate the maniacs from the LAG-fish from the actually good LAGs. However, you will rarely, if ever, encounter a decent LAG at micro and small stakes so as a general assumption I will view these guys to be bad aggressive guys.
So how do we play against these guys? Well, the art of playing against LAG-fish/maniacs is subtle. You want to balance several things when playing against these guys. But the first rule to make money from these guys is, and I believe this is a surprise for some of you, to valuebet relentlessly.
Yes, just as we did against the loose-passive guys we need to valuebet our hands strongly. Our starting hand range is stronger than theirs so we are still looking to getting paid off from our good hands. And since we are still playing against bad guys at micro/small stakes a general assumption that they will call too much still holds.
However against these guys we need to prepare for a high-variance approach. Since they are playing aggressively we can’t just b/f AK on a K-high turn board as we could against the loose-passive guys. We need to make much tougher decisions against these guys as they are bluffing a wide range and they will often try to rep whatever the turn or river just completed. So we aren’t nearly as likely to get away from TPTK when they have a set and we need to accept that these guys flops just as many monsters as the loose-passive guy, but that we are going to pay them off way more often. So when we are raised we still need to proceed with caution, but more often than not we need to determine at that very moment whether we want to go all the way with our hand.
This brings me to my other main point in playing against the LAG-fish/maniac. This is a combined don’t and do that follow logically from each other. What these guys really thrives on are people who call once or twice and then fold. Since these guys are going to follow through a huge amount of the time it is a huge don’t to build a pot if you aren’t going to call a bet on most river cards. If you can’t call a second or third barrel then don’t call the first. I see a lot of people calling flop and turn bets only to fold once the river bricks. This is literally to light money on fire. The connection to the previous point is of course that once our TPTK gets raised we can’t call only to fold to a river shove. If we call the raise, we have committed ourselves in the hand.
And now we are at the third point. How do we play when our medium strength hands are being raised? E.g. we hold 88 on a TT3r board and our c-bet is raised. Against the loose-passive guy this is an easy fold. Against the maniac we are in a tough spot. We most likely actually have the best hand right now, but the turn and river card are likely to be ugly for us. Any face card is going to hit the maniacs range and he will surely fire a second or third barrel on them. As I just said however, we can’t call the flop if we plan on folding to a third of the deck on turn/river. This leads to a lot of people to reach an erroneous conclusion; we must raise.
This is however very wrong for several reasons. When we raise one of three things are going to happen.
1) We are actually behind and are just lighting money on fire by raising into his made hand.
2) We are ahead, but we are never being called by anything that we beat. If he should call us, he is doing it with the intention of taking the pot away from us on a later street and we are most likely unable to call and have just lost more than we should.
3) We are ahead, but since we are playing against a maniac he is bluff-reraising. If he shoves over our raise, we are once again in a very tough spot. Folding is likely a mistake against this guy, but we really don’t know. It is very unlikely we have a large enough sample size to know what we should do in these kinds of spots.
So in conclusion raising there only leads us to fold out worse, valuetown ourselves against better and possibly allow him to bluff us off an even bigger pot. My advice in spots like these is then logically to fold.
This describes one of the subtle evaluations one must make when playing against maniacs. On one side we want to valuebet our 8s, but if we plan on folding when raised I just argued we shouldn’t even c-bet it. So we must decide if we think he bluffs enough so that we must check behind (or enough so that we can actually call down!), or that his bluff frequency isn’t so high so that we can go for thin value. This applies for all marginal holdings we might have against a maniac. We need to consistently avoid losing medium to big pots without showdown. Rather lose a bunch of small pots and then lose a bunch of medium pots.
In the hand below BB is a maniac with 46/28 and a overall 3-bet percentage of 16% and even higher from the big blind. He follows through a lot. He has a turn c-bet percentage of 71% and river c-bet of 67%. Once I call the turn I’m not folding to any river, and in reality I’m likely never folding on that flop. His line basically makes so little sense, he is most likely 3-betting AJ(T)+, and if he have 6x he should be check/raising and I’m most likely going to have to pay him off.
Grabbed by Holdem Manager
NL Holdem $2(BB) Replayer
SB ($228)
BB ($207)
UTG ($82.17)
UTG+1 ($99.42)
CO ($331)
Hero ($236)
Dealt to Hero 9
A
fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to $8, fold, BB calls $6
FLOP ($17) A 6 6
BB bets $16, Hero calls $16
TURN ($49) A 6 6 Q
BB bets $48, Hero calls $48
RIVER ($145) A 6 6 Q 8
BB bets $133, Hero calls $133
Hero shows 9 A
(Pre 56%, Flop 97.7%, Turn 90.9%)
BB shows J T
(Pre 44%, Flop 2.3%, Turn 9.1%)
Hero wins $409
So what kind of hands are we looking to play against these guys? Well, opening up your hand range as you did against the loose-passive players is going to lead you down a highly profitable, but also high variance path. If you can handle the swings associated with it, you do however want to open up your starting hands. The hands you are looking to add into your starting hands are hands with high card value as top pair often is good against these guys. Once again you want to be the guy who gets to stack them, but unlike the loose-passive player you are risking getting stacked yourself in the process. There is no doubt though that the more you play these guys the more of their money are you going to take from them in the long run.
Cliffs for the loose-aggressive/maniac:
- Valuebet as always
- Don’t build a pot if you aren’t going to go to showdown
- Open up your hand range with high cards.
The nit:
The nit is basically playing too tight so the way we make money against him is to slowly steal his blinds. As such we aren’t going to make a quick score from him, but he certainly isn’t going to give us problems either.
One thing to notice about the nit is that he comes in two different shapes. One guy will be playing very tight pre-flop but once we are post-flop he will be very aggressive. He will be playing the few hands he do play very aggressively and is going to be difficult to move off a hand. These guys give tremendous implied odds and you want to play hands that have great implied odds and stay away from easily dominated hands. As such you want to play hands like suited connectors, suited one-gappers and pocket pairs. You want to stay away from hands such as KJ or AT as you are going to have no idea about how to play these hands if you connect with the flop.
The other type of nit is the weak-tight guy. He is very timid and plays a strict fit-or-fold type of game. Against these guys you can play basically ATC as you are going to be able to take away the pot so often post-flop. A quick note to this guy is that he might not be fit-or-fold at the flop but rather turn and river. As such you will see him c-bet the flop a bunch, but if he didn’t hit anything he will completely shut down on turn and river. So against these guys you want to look beyond flop aggression and look at turn and river aggression. If he is playing fit-or-fold you can float these guys with ATC and take the pot down on turn or river once he checks to you.
Cliffs for the nit:
- Win by stealing blinds
- Figure out his post-flop play and exploit it.
The reg-fish:
The reg-fish is a weird beast. He has decent pre-flop stats yet somehow he isn’t winning any money. The reason why he isn’t even able to capitalize on the fish is because of his post-flop play. To put it bluntly, he is worse than the fish post-flop since he has a pre-flop advantage. So how do we beat this guy? I don’t know. I can’t tell you why he isn’t winning money; all I can say is that he has some major post-flop leaks. It is going to be up to you to figure out what those leaks are. However since you are going to play him a lot, since he is a reg, you might want to spend some time away from the table with HEM or PT3 and figure out exactly what his leaks are. After that you simply utilize that knowledge and take his money.
Cliffs for the reg-fish:
- Do your homework, win his money.
Closing remarks:
As a closing remark I want to address something I have seen before in regards to playing fish and something I wholeheartedly believe is wrong. You find yourself in a marginal spot and post the hand on the forums. You will then get a bunch of replies saying you should fold and find yourself a better spot. This is wrong for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, there likely isn’t going to be a better spot against this specific guy. Sure, you might find a better spot against another fish at another table, but that isn’t what that hand was about. Remember as I wrote in the introduction, our goal is to get more than our fair share of the guys money. Put in other words, we are racing the other regs as to who can get his money first. Once the other regs sit on the money you aren’t going to get them. So turning down marginal situations is going to lose the race.
The other point is that should you be so unlucky and get stacked then the upside is that the fish are less likely to go broke. Put in other words, the expected value from the fish increases with his stack size. So if you are truly in a 50/50 spot you want to gamble with him. If you win, you have won the race against the other regs and gained more than your share; if you lose you stand to be able to get more back since the fish is now deep. On exception to this might be if you are deep and so is the fish. In this case it might be wise to wait for a better spot simply because you sacrifice equity by not being able to play the fish deepstacked.
And finally I would like to thank Ice_w0lf for reading through the draft for this thread and giving me suggestions.
Introduction:
When we began to play we all learned how to play TAG ABC poker. We learned by using hand charts and rigidly followed them and opened certain hands in certain positions. We were told to never bluff at the micros and value-bet our good hands strongly. These simple strategies are enough to beat the micro up to a certain point, but what happens when we move up to 50 NL and small stakes?
We encounter more regs and fewer fish, our good hands aren’t getting paid off as much as they used to and we find ourselves in more tough spot. What are the ways people start combating this? They start getting into leveling wars with the other regs; 3-betting lighter, v-betting thinner (often to thin), 4-bet bluffing etc. Basically people search for a way to beat the other regs to prove to themselves that they are “beating” the level. They want to feel like they are better than the people they regularly play with thinking that this is where the money is made. That is wrong!
I cannot stress enough how this line of thinking is wrong. You aren’t much better than the other regs at your limit and you only have a slight edge at best against them. I’m not saying that regs at 50 NL or small stakes don’t have leaks, they do. They have plenty of leaks and they are hugely exploitable, but so are you. If you had a big edge against the regs you wouldn’t be playing with them, you would have moved up long ago. Just check your database. You aren’t up or down a significant amount against the other good players, more likely you are just trading coolers. So where are you going to get your money from? Well you are going to do what you did to get to your current level, beating up the fish.
There are fish at every level. Don’t think that just because you hit 200 NL there is no fish left and everybody is playing a solid 21/18 style 3-betting just the right amount etc. No, there is still fish at 200 NL and there is fish even at 2kNL (or so I’ve heard, I’ve never played 2k NL). And it is from these players you should be looking to make your moneys. And more importantly you should be looking to get more than your fair share of their money. The other regs are also going to win from these guys, it’s only a matter of time before they are broke. Some fish will redeposit some wont. But they will almost always leave the table when they reach a stop loss, for some it is one BI for others it may be 5 or 6, but the amount of money to be had is always limited. Being the guy who gets the most of the cake should be your goal.
So how are we going to get the most of the fish’s money? It’s simple really, we play more pots with them. In doing so we are going to have to expand on the hands that we normally play. But what hands are should we play against the fish? Well, that really depends on what kind of fish they are. A fish isn’t simply just a fish. He is a player just like everybody else you encounter at the table with weaknesses and strengths. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise to you that different type of fish requires different strategies. In the following I’ll try to describe the best way to play against each different type of fish based on what characterizes each individual stereotype.
The loose-passive guy:
This is your garden variety fish that you have encountered dozens of times in your past. They have pre-flop stats like 37/3 and a very low aggression factor post-flop. If you have made your way through the micros it should be fairly clear to you how to beat these guys; valuebet, valuebet and valuebet. I cannot stress enough how big a mistake it is to not valuebet relentlessly against these guys.
SB in the hand below is a 55/5 and BB is a 46/13
Grabbed by Holdem Manager
NL Holdem $2(BB) Replayer
SB ($199)
BB ($70.17)
UTG ($365)
UTG+1 ($314)
CO ($352)
Hero ($256)
Dealt to Hero K
AUTG calls $2, fold, fold, Hero raises to $10, SB calls $9, BB calls $8, UTG calls $8
FLOP ($40) 7
J K SB checks, BB checks, UTG checks, Hero bets $28, SB calls $28, BB calls $28, UTG folds
TURN ($124) 7
J K 5 SB checks, BB checks, Hero bets $62, SB calls $62, BB folds
RIVER ($248) 7
J K 5 Q SB checks, Hero bets $124, SB calls $98.48
Hero shows K
A (Pre 63%, Flop 79.8%, Turn 72.7%)
SB shows Q
9 (Pre 37%, Flop 20.2%, Turn 27.3%)
Hero wins $441
Against a decent player you might be inclined to check river back. There is pretty much nothing a decent player is calling with that aren’t beating you here. T9 just got there as did KQ. Putting SB on a calling range that we are beating is really, really difficult. Luckily, we don’t have to. All we need to know about this guy is that he calls down with Q9 on board like this and TPTK turns into a valuebet.
A common mistake I have seen in the forums is the misuse of the concept “pot control”. When playing against loose-passive guys you have to throw that concept out the window. Often you see a hand where hero is holding something like KsJs in position on a Kd7h4h board and bets the flop. Villain calls and the turn is 2c. Villain checks and hero checks behind. When asked why he checked turn behind he says something like pot control. This is a huge mistake against these players. You are losing so much value by not going for three streets of value with TPGK. So often is he going to call you down with K9 or just flat call a draw and fold river unimproved. Don’t miss out on that turn bet.
Both the hands discussed above should be fairly standard if you have made your way up through the micros. And I can tell you that most of the other regs at your stake is also going to be able to play these hands against the fish and profit. So this leads me to the opening premise of this post; that in order to win more money from the fish you have to play more hands with them than the other regs.
So what hands are we going to play against them and how? Well, since these guys are playing a ton of hands, you should be able to play a ton of hands against them. You don’t need to have a better starting hand than they have on average, because we have superior post-flop skills. We are going to be paid off from them so often that it more than outweighs any pre-flop disadvantage we have. Unfortunately we aren’t playing these guys heads up (and if you are, congrats, take their money and buy something nice). There are other players at the table so we can’t go overboard in regards to the hands we play lest we lose too much to the other regs at the table. I can’t set forth a specific chart off hands that you can play against these guys with simply because too many other considerations need to be taken.
Obviously we want to be in position so normally we have the blinds to act behind us and they are going to have an impact on how much out of line we can get. But in a vacuum I will say that high-cards are good. Against these players we aren’t as worried about being dominated because their range is so wide. Also suited cards are good. If one of these guys limps in don’t be afraid to iso-raise Q4s from the BTN. I would say that any suited queens, kings or aces should be considered a raise from the BTN against these guys. From the CO you might want to cut some of the suited queens off. A hand like K8o is often also profitable to raise from the BTN. Now, don’t take these hand examples as the gospel but I want you to think about raising a much wider range when isolating these guys.
A thing to keep in mind when deciding what hands to play against these guys, are their post-flop tendencies. Just because you have pegged them as loose-passive isn’t enough to describe the whole story. Some of these guys are playing a very straightforward fit-or-fold type of flop game. If they fold to a c-bet very often a strategy of raise and c-bet ATC should show an immediate profit. Other loose-passive guys are calling everything on the flop. They will float with over, call with gutshots and backdoor draws. It should be clear that against these guys you would be more inclined to show up with A-high than 7-high.
That was a bit about how to exploit the loose-passive player. The other part is what not to do. Against these guys there really isn’t that many things you should watch out for. However, once a loose-passive guy become aggressive, you need to reevaluate. If he raises your bet at any point during the hand you most often need to get the hell out of there. That is it. It is the only don’t against these guys. Not being able to get away from TPTK against them is a huge leak.
Cliffs for the loose-passive guy:
- Valuebet, valuebet, valuebet
- Open up your hand range
- If he shows any aggression, seriously consider dumping any non-nut hands.
The loose guy:
The loose guy, is just that. This player plays to many hands but do otherwise have decent stats. He might be something like 37/22 pre-flop and not much can be said about his post-flop tendencies as they vary to much from player to player.
Whether or not this guy should be classified as a fish is debatable. Or rather whether or not he should be included in this post is debatable. He surely isn’t a player to be feared, but if he has good post-flop skills he might actually be a winner.
Our advantage against these guys should simply be our better hand selection. Once we enter a pot we are generally going to have the best hand. I wouldn’t recommend you guys to go out of you way to play against these guys simply because this will negate our initial advantage. Just play solid poker and you are going to win money from him in the long run. If he is bad post-flop you can start to target him and open up your range as you did with the loose-passive guy.
What you really want to note about this guy is his post-flop tendencies, but I think it is beyond the scope off this post to discuss what they might be and how to adjust to them. That is an entire subject in itself that deserves its own post.
Cliffs for the loose guy:
- Read the text. It is almost in cliff as it is.
The loose-aggressive guy/maniac:
The difference between a LAG-fish and a maniac is a fluid thing. Anyway they will be playing a bunch of hands and come in raising often. They have pre-flop stats in the range of 35+/25+ and the post-flop tendencies are what separate the maniacs from the LAG-fish from the actually good LAGs. However, you will rarely, if ever, encounter a decent LAG at micro and small stakes so as a general assumption I will view these guys to be bad aggressive guys.
So how do we play against these guys? Well, the art of playing against LAG-fish/maniacs is subtle. You want to balance several things when playing against these guys. But the first rule to make money from these guys is, and I believe this is a surprise for some of you, to valuebet relentlessly.
Yes, just as we did against the loose-passive guys we need to valuebet our hands strongly. Our starting hand range is stronger than theirs so we are still looking to getting paid off from our good hands. And since we are still playing against bad guys at micro/small stakes a general assumption that they will call too much still holds.
However against these guys we need to prepare for a high-variance approach. Since they are playing aggressively we can’t just b/f AK on a K-high turn board as we could against the loose-passive guys. We need to make much tougher decisions against these guys as they are bluffing a wide range and they will often try to rep whatever the turn or river just completed. So we aren’t nearly as likely to get away from TPTK when they have a set and we need to accept that these guys flops just as many monsters as the loose-passive guy, but that we are going to pay them off way more often. So when we are raised we still need to proceed with caution, but more often than not we need to determine at that very moment whether we want to go all the way with our hand.
This brings me to my other main point in playing against the LAG-fish/maniac. This is a combined don’t and do that follow logically from each other. What these guys really thrives on are people who call once or twice and then fold. Since these guys are going to follow through a huge amount of the time it is a huge don’t to build a pot if you aren’t going to call a bet on most river cards. If you can’t call a second or third barrel then don’t call the first. I see a lot of people calling flop and turn bets only to fold once the river bricks. This is literally to light money on fire. The connection to the previous point is of course that once our TPTK gets raised we can’t call only to fold to a river shove. If we call the raise, we have committed ourselves in the hand.
And now we are at the third point. How do we play when our medium strength hands are being raised? E.g. we hold 88 on a TT3r board and our c-bet is raised. Against the loose-passive guy this is an easy fold. Against the maniac we are in a tough spot. We most likely actually have the best hand right now, but the turn and river card are likely to be ugly for us. Any face card is going to hit the maniacs range and he will surely fire a second or third barrel on them. As I just said however, we can’t call the flop if we plan on folding to a third of the deck on turn/river. This leads to a lot of people to reach an erroneous conclusion; we must raise.
This is however very wrong for several reasons. When we raise one of three things are going to happen.
1) We are actually behind and are just lighting money on fire by raising into his made hand.
2) We are ahead, but we are never being called by anything that we beat. If he should call us, he is doing it with the intention of taking the pot away from us on a later street and we are most likely unable to call and have just lost more than we should.
3) We are ahead, but since we are playing against a maniac he is bluff-reraising. If he shoves over our raise, we are once again in a very tough spot. Folding is likely a mistake against this guy, but we really don’t know. It is very unlikely we have a large enough sample size to know what we should do in these kinds of spots.
So in conclusion raising there only leads us to fold out worse, valuetown ourselves against better and possibly allow him to bluff us off an even bigger pot. My advice in spots like these is then logically to fold.
This describes one of the subtle evaluations one must make when playing against maniacs. On one side we want to valuebet our 8s, but if we plan on folding when raised I just argued we shouldn’t even c-bet it. So we must decide if we think he bluffs enough so that we must check behind (or enough so that we can actually call down!), or that his bluff frequency isn’t so high so that we can go for thin value. This applies for all marginal holdings we might have against a maniac. We need to consistently avoid losing medium to big pots without showdown. Rather lose a bunch of small pots and then lose a bunch of medium pots.
In the hand below BB is a maniac with 46/28 and a overall 3-bet percentage of 16% and even higher from the big blind. He follows through a lot. He has a turn c-bet percentage of 71% and river c-bet of 67%. Once I call the turn I’m not folding to any river, and in reality I’m likely never folding on that flop. His line basically makes so little sense, he is most likely 3-betting AJ(T)+, and if he have 6x he should be check/raising and I’m most likely going to have to pay him off.
Grabbed by Holdem Manager
NL Holdem $2(BB) Replayer
SB ($228)
BB ($207)
UTG ($82.17)
UTG+1 ($99.42)
CO ($331)
Hero ($236)
Dealt to Hero 9
A fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to $8, fold, BB calls $6
FLOP ($17) A
6 6 BB bets $16, Hero calls $16
TURN ($49) A
6 6 Q BB bets $48, Hero calls $48
RIVER ($145) A
6 6 Q 8 BB bets $133, Hero calls $133
Hero shows 9
A (Pre 56%, Flop 97.7%, Turn 90.9%)
BB shows J
T (Pre 44%, Flop 2.3%, Turn 9.1%)
Hero wins $409
So what kind of hands are we looking to play against these guys? Well, opening up your hand range as you did against the loose-passive players is going to lead you down a highly profitable, but also high variance path. If you can handle the swings associated with it, you do however want to open up your starting hands. The hands you are looking to add into your starting hands are hands with high card value as top pair often is good against these guys. Once again you want to be the guy who gets to stack them, but unlike the loose-passive player you are risking getting stacked yourself in the process. There is no doubt though that the more you play these guys the more of their money are you going to take from them in the long run.
Cliffs for the loose-aggressive/maniac:
- Valuebet as always
- Don’t build a pot if you aren’t going to go to showdown
- Open up your hand range with high cards.
The nit:
The nit is basically playing too tight so the way we make money against him is to slowly steal his blinds. As such we aren’t going to make a quick score from him, but he certainly isn’t going to give us problems either.
One thing to notice about the nit is that he comes in two different shapes. One guy will be playing very tight pre-flop but once we are post-flop he will be very aggressive. He will be playing the few hands he do play very aggressively and is going to be difficult to move off a hand. These guys give tremendous implied odds and you want to play hands that have great implied odds and stay away from easily dominated hands. As such you want to play hands like suited connectors, suited one-gappers and pocket pairs. You want to stay away from hands such as KJ or AT as you are going to have no idea about how to play these hands if you connect with the flop.
The other type of nit is the weak-tight guy. He is very timid and plays a strict fit-or-fold type of game. Against these guys you can play basically ATC as you are going to be able to take away the pot so often post-flop. A quick note to this guy is that he might not be fit-or-fold at the flop but rather turn and river. As such you will see him c-bet the flop a bunch, but if he didn’t hit anything he will completely shut down on turn and river. So against these guys you want to look beyond flop aggression and look at turn and river aggression. If he is playing fit-or-fold you can float these guys with ATC and take the pot down on turn or river once he checks to you.
Cliffs for the nit:
- Win by stealing blinds
- Figure out his post-flop play and exploit it.
The reg-fish:
The reg-fish is a weird beast. He has decent pre-flop stats yet somehow he isn’t winning any money. The reason why he isn’t even able to capitalize on the fish is because of his post-flop play. To put it bluntly, he is worse than the fish post-flop since he has a pre-flop advantage. So how do we beat this guy? I don’t know. I can’t tell you why he isn’t winning money; all I can say is that he has some major post-flop leaks. It is going to be up to you to figure out what those leaks are. However since you are going to play him a lot, since he is a reg, you might want to spend some time away from the table with HEM or PT3 and figure out exactly what his leaks are. After that you simply utilize that knowledge and take his money.
Cliffs for the reg-fish:
- Do your homework, win his money.
Closing remarks:
As a closing remark I want to address something I have seen before in regards to playing fish and something I wholeheartedly believe is wrong. You find yourself in a marginal spot and post the hand on the forums. You will then get a bunch of replies saying you should fold and find yourself a better spot. This is wrong for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, there likely isn’t going to be a better spot against this specific guy. Sure, you might find a better spot against another fish at another table, but that isn’t what that hand was about. Remember as I wrote in the introduction, our goal is to get more than our fair share of the guys money. Put in other words, we are racing the other regs as to who can get his money first. Once the other regs sit on the money you aren’t going to get them. So turning down marginal situations is going to lose the race.
The other point is that should you be so unlucky and get stacked then the upside is that the fish are less likely to go broke. Put in other words, the expected value from the fish increases with his stack size. So if you are truly in a 50/50 spot you want to gamble with him. If you win, you have won the race against the other regs and gained more than your share; if you lose you stand to be able to get more back since the fish is now deep. On exception to this might be if you are deep and so is the fish. In this case it might be wise to wait for a better spot simply because you sacrifice equity by not being able to play the fish deepstacked.
And finally I would like to thank Ice_w0lf for reading through the draft for this thread and giving me suggestions.
04-08-2010
, 04:00 PM
04-08-2010
, 04:52 PM
04-08-2010
, 05:25 PM
04-08-2010
, 06:19 PM
