So, I had a 2 pronged question and I thought it'd be best to just jam them into one thread.

1) How do you go about identifying players? From the books and courses I've taken it's always stated that 'the money comes from the fish'. Which is obviously very true but I was curious about how to identify them, and if how I did it was appropriate.

So first off, If a standard UTG range is 10-15% maybe a little less, does that mean essentially that the V should only be opening ~15% of the time? Because how I was looking at it is: If V opens from UTG more than 1/2 times every 10 orbits he's looser. And obviously I would do this from every position, for example: if someone is opening from the btn ~1/3 time I'd realize that he may be tighter where most BTN ranges are ~40%.

I also took into consideration bet sizing (if someone re raised me to a stupid amount, like I RFI to 3x BB and someone min raises for example), and any information I could gather from showdowns. If there's any other big tips or tricks to identifying how strong/weak a V is I'd love to hear about them.

I'm also unsure if it's standard to just apply standard GTO ranges to everyone initially and make adjustments from there based off what I see.

2) I'm just getting into seriously studying spots and most of the time when I looked up where to start the answer is usually "where you struggle most". But for someone just starting to take the game seriously I am not sure where I struggle most, so I was hoping someone could offer some insight on where to start this process.

In my mind I figured starting from most common opening positions made sense (BTN,CO,SB) and working backwards to EP. I am also unsure of how to study BB because I have struggled to find appropriate ranges for that positoin.

Sorry for the long winded post, I just figured it'd be better than throwing 2 up.

Edit:

I don't play on sites that use allow a HUD, lately I've been playing on party poker

Finding "fish" comes from experience.

As you work on your own game, you will start to recognize spots where others make mistakes, since you do know how to properly play those spots.
Once you've seen them make those mistakes, you can start taking advantage of that.

The worst players will have very obvious mistakes, like calling a pot sized bet 3x with 3rd pair.
This is also very easy to exploit once you figure it out.

Other mistakes are much harder to find, but this will come automatically as you work on your own game.


As for a guideline where to start studying, here's some very broad general advice:

BTN > CO > BB > SB > MP > EP
Start with the BTN since that's where most of your profit comes from.

Start with pre-flop, figure out proper RFI (raise first in) ranges, calling ranges, 3-bet ranges and 4-bet ranges.
There is a LOT of pre-flop stuff to know!
You build your entire strategy further upon these ranges, so study them well!

Then move on to flop play, turn play and finally river play.

Try to get a general grasp of everything first, then go deeper into stuff.

It's probably better to know pre-flop only 60% and study some post-flop stuff if you've never studied any of that.
Than to get extremely good at pre-flop, but have no clue how to play post-flop.


Red Chip Poker CORE has a very well structured course that covers all the important concepts from the very beginning to a decently advanced level in order.

Key fish identifier: Open limping pre. Especially as the frequency goes up.

Another fish indicator (but not perfect) - they’re routinely playing with less than a full buy in. If their stack is always 80 bb or less, there’s a good chance they’re a fish. Better players usually want to play deep stacked.

Question 1: I’d say you’re making things a bit complicated for yourself. Yes, position is important but you’ll be able to reach conclusions on the types of players you’re up against by looking at their overall VPIP/PFR/AF and just paying attention to mistakes they make

Yep look at VPIP/PFR. Are the playing many hands and limping into pots?

Don't fall into the trap of assuming loose is equal to fishy, even if you see them lose a few hands, as loose is always higher risk.

A fish is basically anyone who you feel you can exploit reliably. So someone who check/folds when they don't connect even when they were the aggressor pre flop. Or someone who limp calls a ton to chase draws where you can win with nothing when the board doesn't complete their draw.

If you feel you've got a read or tell on someone, they're a fish to you.

As for reading - I'd start with any general book on the game you most take an interest in and take it from there. I've found that any leaks in my game are generally exposed the more I read through the book and try to put what I've learned into practice.