I have been thinking about this a lot lately. What kinds of players are those 40/5s and 56/28s? Some of them have the concept of cbetting, since they do it a lot (e.g. they would open-raise, then bet once and give up if called). Others have a concept vaguely resembling pot odds, since they would be making these awkward blocker bets.

But are these concepts acquired by simply playing and seeing others make those plays? Or have they read about them in a poker book or a strategy post in a forum? If it's the latter, how come they learned enough about the game to know about pot odds, EV, cbets, bluffing, etc. but not enough to know that open-limping 82s OTB is bad?

Do any of you guys personally know fish? Have you ever talked to them about their thought process while they're playing?

i know a guy who plays PLO 10c/25c with a VPIP of +70% who limps nearly all his hands.
i think that qualifies as a fish on the first look.
but he plays a good tag-game postflop and has a great feel for riverspots in general.
he is breakeven over more than 80k hands, but one would assume that hes losing at least 10bb/100.
once he nearly folded 88KJ on 83K flushdraw-flop vs a sinlge raise.
we were telephoning and i told him that he cant limp 88xx if he folds nearly the best possible flop
vs a single raise while having a K blocker. he was scared of KKxx....
what i want to say is there are great players who lack preflop-discipline
and they quickly get labeld as pure fish.
on the other hand there are players who play tag pre and post,
but are ridiculously bad at turn and river play,
but that wont cause attention as fast as a 70/2 style.
many regs with solid preflop-stats play worse than some 70/2 guys postflop,
and a big part of that is their lack of experience in turn and esp riverspots,
since they usually get it in on earlier streets or fold a lot.

this friend of mine totally lacks math-knowledge (probability/standard deviations/implied odds etc.),
he once folded topset on J92 fluhdraw vs 2 others to avoid a suckout "that always comes there"...
he doesnt read anything about poker, doesnt use tracker,
or ever had a clue about rakeback before i told him about it.
(lost more than 100 stacks in missed rakeback, didnt use his points at FT ever, worth of ~400$).
never the less, after all he is good at brm and semi-good at tiltcontrol
and breaks even at PLO25 and even wins at different tourneys.

the skills like brm, tilt-control and game-selection and riverplay are not as visible as preflop-stats,
but matter a lot more in PLO and all together they are even more important NLHE, imo.

i thought a fish here at 2+2 was anyone heads up against the Hero

I think most rec players have never read a poker book, or heard of 2+2. But they do pick up some simple concepts just from being around the game and talking to other rec players. For example, many 'fish' pick up the concept of cbetting just from watching others play and listening to table talk, but couldn't actually explain to you when or why it's done.

Also, alot of recreational players simply aren't there just to win, or make the best plays at all times. Most are just there to gamble and have fun. There are many 'fish' who could explain the concept of pot odds to you, then immediatly call a pot-sized all-in with a gutshot.

Finally, even the players who have read books, and do try to play good, don't always correctly apply the concepts, or understand how to weight their importance. For eample, a player knows that 82o is not a good hand, but he also knows about the "power of position" so he will play it anyway because he's in the CO.

think the question is why do you think you are not a fish. one mans fish is anothers shark

I think a lot of recreational players, both live and online, have a very basic understanding of the fundamentals and I think a great deal of them have done some amount of homework. Most of them have probably read the wrong books, (you know which ones I'm talking about) browsed the wrong forums, and sought advice from the wrong players (reg-fish).

They understand pot odds, implied odds, starting hand requirements, position and so forth but I think a lot of them are just HORRIBLE hand readers. I did this for years. They understand that a bet is either a bluff or for value, but they don't understand when they are value-owning themselves, or that there are no hands better than theirs that will fold.

Okay, but if they understand the basics, isn't NOT playing 50/2 part of the basics? Where do these guys get their ideas from?

i play a lot of low stake hu sngs and i can spot a fish within 7 hands. its really aaaallllll the little things that count.

where do they get there ideas from? **hear me out** funny you asked bc i notice that alot of these guys, by the end of the match, have adopted my strategies. soo many idiots sit down and start limping, check calling everything, never 3betting or Cbetting. then, after a few blind levels they start mimicking me.

so to answer your question, i think some fish try to mimic the players around them without knowing what the hell they are doing.

They mimic everything except folding preflop, because doing that is so boooooring¹.

1) Except in Rush/Zoom or on the bubble in MTTs.

can we just assume that when i say "fish" im really saying "more of a fish than herewegosteelers"?

A "fish" is just a bad player. There are all types of them, loose-passives, aggro monkeys, weak-tight. You should be able to identify them and exploit them.

i heard they live in water and have short term memory

The fish is the guy that causes everyone else to sit out when he busts.

I guess every level has its fish and those fish can have many different levels of understanding.

When I was playing NL 4 I wouldn't have labeled a 30/15/1.4 player with 5% 3bet as a fish, because those guys actually win at NL4 and are the regs of the level. At the upper micros though I consider these guys fish because they don't really make my life too difficult.

I'm pretty sure that if I sat in a midstakes games I'd quickly be labeled as a fish by the good regs there, even though I don't have leaks that are obvious enough to my upper micro opponents that they can punish me for them.

I've always thought of a "fish" as a bad player who is bad simply because of ignorance. The sort of ignorance that a child has.

This differs from a "donk" that is a bad player because of a combination of ignorance and experience. Donks develop their own donk theories based on their experience. Given poker's VARIANCE, human memory (which is atrocious), and a donk's tendency to focus on winning in specific situations vs the long term... Donks develop a whole host of -EV plays that they think are +EV plays.

Fish play 1 table. Done.

I grind micro 6 max sngs, and you can just tell after one or two orbits.

In the 6 max sng arena, they are defined by a few things:

-They open limp almost if not every hand.
- They cold call 3 bets from OOP. Mostly pre and sometimes post flop.
- They donk bet. A LOT.
- They flat call mega-raises after they donk bet.
- They bet when they have strong showdown (bluff when they don't need to)
- They accidently triple range merge me. (genius value bet when I level myself by thinking "why the **** would he bet here?"
- They make LOOSE calls, if they get shoved on more than once, maybe twice.
- They flat call 3 bets liberally. Regardless of cards, odds, or image.
- They min 3 bet pre, giving you amazing odds with any two cards that you just raised with (<<<My favourite)

Theres a lot more but I'm in the middle of grinding right now, so meh.

it swims...

I've always liked Splitsuit's definition of fish, which he breaks into two major categories: a-fish and p-fish (aggressive fish and passive fish, respectively).

They both play poor poker, but in fundamentally different ways from each other. In simple terms, an a-fish player makes betting and raising mistakes, while a p-fish makes calling mistakes. In other words, to exploit each type, you need to change your approach to counter their tendencies and weaknesses.

I take a lot of notes when I play, and I'm often writing "a-fish" or "p-fish" at the top of my notes so that I can instantly know what I want to do against this type of player.

good stuff itt.

do you guys have a guess as to what % of fish are actually players who "know" what the right thing to do is sometimes, but go with the "naah, screw that, imma do it my way"? for example, thew know that playing 42/5 is bad, but they open-limp QTo from UTG anyway?

I think the 70% VPIP fish actually think that every hand is supposed to go to showdown and whoever has the best hand wins. Almost as if they're playing without any betting / money involved at all. They are just calling or min betting or whatever to get to the next street and then to showdown to see who wins. I am sure that is what they think the rules of poker are. That everyone is supposed to go to showdown every hand and whoever has the best hand err wins lol.

They just think about who is going to win the hand and not about making money or whatever.

I think the vast majority of the player type you describe believe in their heart of hearts that if you are good enough then you can turn a -ev play into a +ev play.

So basically they don't see it as a mistake because obviously they think they are good enough.

I dunno, I think your average super loose passive fish doesn't actually believe that there's a strategy to win, he just thinks it's like craps or blackjack.

I was going to post something very similar to this.

A lot of fish truly believe that poker, craps, and blackjack are all equivalent skill wise, that you gotta get lucky to win

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fish

I see this topic is getting a lot of serious replies, but I don't think it's worth delving into at any real length. The term is broad, relative, and entirely subjective. That said, I like to define a fish by how they think.