Floating
Playing against really tight or really loose players is quite simple and most players with a functioning brain learn how to adapt to these types of opponents quite early in their poker careers: avoid the rocks and value bet the calling stations. However a lot of players struggle to adapt to the TAGs who raise more than premium hands and often follow up these preflop raises with continuation bets on the flop.
If someone is raising close to 10% or more of their hands preflop then they won’t hold a strong hand (top pair or better) on the flop that often, so if we fold to these continuation bets unless we flop a strong hand then we are often folding the best hand. The times we do flop a strong hand we don’t necessarily get paid because our opponent does not hold a strong hand every time. The end result is that the TAGs win most of these small pots and we don’t win enough big pots to make up for losing all the small ones. So we need to fight for more of these small pots to turn the tide and floating is one the ways to accomplish this. To do this we will need to win pots with some of our weaker hands and this will require tougher decisions than what we are used to, so to make our life easier we will generally only do this when we are HU with the opponent and in position.
A note on position:
Many (if not most) players underestimate the importance of position (as well as overestimating the edge they have over other players) and don’t realise how –EV all those marginal hands they play out of position are. How often have you been out of position and missed out on a value bet on the river with your flush because the river paired the board and you checked it to your opponent who checked behind with his straight or two pair? How often have you bet the river out of position only to be raised out of your seat when you would have been able to save that bet if your opponent had bet into you on the river (fearing you might check behind)? How often have you been able to bluff a player with your busted draw because he checked it to you when the scare card fell on the river? Position is a major advantage that allows you to control the pot size and good players understand how valuable this is. If you play most of your big pots in position then it will have a significant effect on your winrate.
Most of the TAGs you will find at the medium to lower stakes generally don’t follow up with a turn bet without the goods when they are out of position. So a cheaper way than raising the flop to find out how strong their hand is, is to call the flop and see if they follow up with a turn bet. If they check then we can safely assume that their hand is not that strong and take a stab at the pot, essentially buying the pot with position. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Unfortunately if we call every time on the flop and bet when checked to then our opponent will catch on to this pretty quickly and adjust accordingly by starting to call us down lighter and\or betting or check raising the turn more often (the weaker players can be floated much more often before they start playing back at you).
Therefore we need to identify situations where its unlikely that our opponent has hit the board or has a hand that he would call a bet on the turn with (ie he has a good chance of improving, pair + flush draw etc). Unfortunately I can’t give you 19 situations where you should float as there is some skill required and you have to take a lot of factors into account when you are deciding whether or not your opponent is likely to have a hand that he will fold to a turn bet.
A few of these are:
- What types of hands does he raise preflop?
- How many of those hit this board?
- How many of those hands have strong draws?
- How loose does your opponent call on the turn?
- What is your image? Does your opponent view you as tight or loose, passive or aggressive, a donk or a good player? (The tighter and better he thinks you are, the more likely he is to fold obviously)
- Do you have a recent history with the opponent that might cause him to play back at you?
- Is he on tilt?
- Do we have outs if we are called?
Im planning to post an example hand in a seperate thread later to show how to apply these concepts but this thread is for discussing the theory and for comments or suggestions. Please feel free to tell me about anything I left out or mistakes in the post.
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Originally Posted by Rondavu
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