ThePokerAcademy.com: Floating Part II

In my last column, I introduced you to the idea of floating. I described floating as calling in position on the flop in a heads-up situation with the intention of trying to win the pot on a later street with an aggressive action. I also discussed this as part of an overall approach to playing with position against aggressive opponents. The idea being that you are calling more preflop. Then, on the flop, you are mostly calling with all your hand types, including strong hands and draws. This allows you to call with air or to float with your misses and makes it very difficult for your opponent to discern your hand strength. This will allow you to win these pots sometimes and will also get you called slightly more often with your stronger hands.

There are two topics that I didn’t discuss in the previous article that I feel are important in regard to floating. First, how should you play when you feel an opponent is floating you on a regular basis? We will come back to this in a moment. The second topic has to do with why we are taking passive lines to start with. In the first article, I discussed the idea of position being more valuable when the stacks are deeper and more decisions need to be made. But there is a second reason to keep the pots smaller. The idea that chips you win are worth less than chips you lose. This becomes very pronounced as you reach the late stages of a tournament. So when you are in the late stages of a tournament, you still want to be active when the opportunities present themselves. You still want to win the blinds and antes. But if an opponent on your right is being very active, it can become difficult to get involved in a lot of pots. Earlier in a tournament, three-betting is a reasonable way to counter an overly aggressive opponent you have position on. The stacks are often deep enough that you will have lots of opportunities to use position to your advantage later. But late in tournaments, sometimes three betting can be all-in and very often if your opponent four-bets, it will be an all-in raise.

So what happens if you both go all in preflop? Well, if you are familiar with ICM, you know that the one stack that is left is worth less than the two stacks that used to be. Both you and your opponent lose value to the field when you combine stacks once you are well into a tournament. This is especially pronounced when you reach the final table and each payout is discrete. So you want to try and play poker and get value in a way that doesn’t result in a lot of all-in type situations. This lends itself naturally to more calling preflop and less reraising, which means you are calling in position a lot. Then you can add a tool like floating to your arsenal to be able to win more of the pots without taking the big risks.

So that leaves the topic of playing when you are up against an opponent with position who you think likes to float you. What adjustments do you think you should make? I would argue that you should still continuation bet at the same rate you would in any heads up situation. The adjustments should all come on the turn and they should be a little opponent-specific. Some opponents will just bet every time you check the turn and fold at a reasonable rate when you lead again. They feel that by making you decide whether to bet the turn, you have to “declare” your hand as good by betting or bad by checking. The somewhat obvious answer against this type of opponent is to make a second continuation bet with some of your misses and most of your draws that you want to continue in the pot with. This will add to your betting range and give your opponents fewer chances to win these pots when you are both weak. You should also check some of your strong hands to induce your opponents to bluff. You can follow that line with either a check-raise or call again to try and induce another bet on the river.

Other opponents will expect a more sophisticated strategy from you and won’t be as predictable. Against these players, you should still check-raise at a decent rate. When your opponent checks behind you, you get to make a strong bet on the river. You should also look to get to showdown cheaply when the opportunity presents itself. It is okay to check the turn and the river with hands that have some value. This may result in you having to make some judgement calls on the river, but that is an important part of poker. ♠

Rep Porter is a two-time WSOP bracelet winner and is the lead instructor at ThePokerAcademy.com, whose mission is to help poker players achieve better results through better decisions and that is done by teaching poker in a way that makes learning easy and enjoyable with high quality courses taught by professional players.

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