Head Games: Game Selection and Exploiting the Fish

Sometimes it’s hard to get a straight answer from a professional poker player. Ask three players a question and you’re liable to get three different answers. Why? Because: It depends; on the situation, opponent, stack sizes, table image, tilt, metagame, etcetera.

Head Games will peer deep inside the twisted minds of today’s top players. We’ll reveal why they do what they do in sticky situations, especially when it comes down to making a critical decision for a major tournament title or calling a check-raise all-in on the river holding only ace-high for a $500,000 pot. Let the games begin.

Craig Tapscott: When you sit down to play, what are your table selection criteria? Do you look for tightness or looseness, or do you perhaps target a particularly fishy player?

Aaron Jones: I don’t have much game selection myself, but I think seat selection is very important. You can do okay in a tough lineup as long as the best (and most aggressive) players are on your right. When good players are on your left, don’t be afraid to tighten up opening ranges (or avoid taking the seat altogether). I always prefer a loose table, even though edges are more defined at a tight table (and easier to attain, if you have discipline). I like loose tables because when people have wider ranges on all streets, there are more guessing games involved. More guessing games means more decisions with more variables, which should always favor the better player. Also, weaker regulars usually do poorly against wide ranges because they have pre-conceived notions of what hand ranges “should” look like and are unable to adjust on the fly.

Andrew Seidman: When you boil it all down, there are really only three player types, and they’re pretty easy to spot if you know what to look for. The first thing I’m going to look for are Bad-Aggressive players. These guys are usually pretty easy to spot; they’re raising far too large (or far too small), they’re in every pot, and they often show down hands like J-4 offsuit. So, if I see one of them at my table, I know that there’s a limited time until they’re going to bust. The next player type I’ll look for are Bad-Passive players. These are much more common because, while they’re also losers in the game, they don’t put money in the pot with total air. So, they only lose large amounts of money in one specific circumstance: when they make a hand, but you make a better one. In this sense, beating Bad-Passive players is easy, but it takes a while.

They’re also easy to spot: I look for anyone who open-limps preflop, who misses value with strong hands, who sits without a full 100 big-blind stack (in live games, these players are often older. Playing “conservatively” is usually just code for “passively.”) Lastly, there are the Good-Aggressive players. These guys are active, betting aggressively with strong hands and bluffing appropriately. Again, you’ll know them when you see them: they never open-limp, always keep a full stack, often reraise preflop, push heavily with their draws, etcetera. So, rather than setting a profile for my table, I try to identify each player individually. After about an orbit of looking for open-limps, stack sizes, abnormally aggressive behavior, reraising preflop, and especially seeing what hands people take to showdown, I can usually put everyone into one of three categories and make a plan of attack from there.

Todd Arnold: To be able to just choose a table based on what you know about the players is unlikely. However, if you are sitting at any random table; after a reasonable amount of time, you should be able to see if it’s an overall tight or loose table regardless of whether you know any of the players. I find that a table with a few loose players will quickly turn the whole table to playing loosely. Sometimes an overall tight table will remain so with the exception of one or two players trying to exploit that by being a little more active and attacking weakness. With all that said, I would certainly prefer a tight table over a loose table of players. [The] simplest reason is the ease of reading tighter opponents, even those that are capable of making a play once in a while.

Versus a tighter opponent, you can exploit their fear of loss [especially] in small pots. You also stand to lose much less in the pots you do lose, because tighter players often bet very strongly when they “have it.” In other words, they “fear bet” and “tell you” when you’re beat. They don’t extract proper value throughout the hand, because they often have bet-sizing leaks/issues. They are not playing your hand or you, but rather, only playing their hand, which makes the game much easier than versus a good loose-aggressive player who is playing you, the board, and the situation.

Craig Tapscott: How do you find and handle fish at the tables?

Aaron Jones: First of all, it’s really important to keep fish happy. Young players don’t realize this. You don’t gain anything by berating a fish, except some short-term satisfaction. Get over yourself – treat a fish with respect, don’t be afraid to talk some trash if the situation seems appropriate and your tone is jovial, but don’t be condescending. They play by the same rules as you do and may take up another hobby if you’re disrespectful to them. Strategy wise, I’m always trying to isolate against them – sometimes by squeezing a hand preflop that I think plays well against their calling range to get another regular out of the pot. At other times, I’ll raise the flop in a multiway pot if I think I can get a regular to fold something and get heads up with the fish. I’ll try to use information from any previous hands that the fish played in order to figure out how he plays his draws and his made hands. Then, I’ll use that information to take the optimal line against the fish in a big pot.

Andrew Seidman: Once you determine which type of fish they are (Bad-Aggressive or Bad-Passive) your plan is easy. The thing that defines a bad player is the inability to fold; so, the first prong of our plan is to value-bet as thinly as possible. Bet for value, raise for value, and fast-play everything. The real problem that most players have with fish, though, is an inability to fold when facing aggression. Since most fish are passive, they only raise when they have the nuts. This means that we need to fold most of our value-betting hands to a raise (which can be a difficult concept to fully accept). So, simply put, against Bad-Passive fish, we bet for value all the time, and fold to any of their raises. Against Bad-Aggressive fish, who raise constantly with weak hands, our plan only changes slightly – we value bet all the time, and we don’t fold to their raises. Playing against weaker players is really that simple.

Todd Arnold: A fishy player is any player that does anything that loses value or chooses any path or line that is less than optimal. The more you know about the game, the more fishy things you see from your opponents. That is what’s called an edge. So, once you have this edge, how do you exploit them? Well, for example, versus a player that is too tight whose range is pocket tens plus and A-J suited plus, I would play high implied odds hands like suited connectors. But regardless of what hand I chose to play versus him, I would (as always) be playing the board texture and betting to get information while representing hands that he fears. That means just forgetting about your hand and focusing on his. The general idea is whatever the weakness is that you recognize in your opponent, you can exploit it for profit. Just play the hand from his mind’s view (what does he think you have? what is he afraid of?) and act accordingly to inflate or control the pot. Don’t just go chasing fish without knowing what makes them fishy and how to exploit it. ♠