Q&A #37: Some Fish Have All the Luck

That reminds me of a guy who took a lot of bad beats and bitterly complained about the bad players at his table.

Player 2: “Don’t you want to play against bad players?”

Player 1: (wide-eyed and serious) “You don’t understand. A bad player will beat a good player two out of three times!”

Good one Felson I luv it…

Ed thanks for answering my question, though I was hoping you would call the article “Fish Always School”. (remember “Donkeys Always Draw”) “School” meaning that they all throw money into the pot together, and you end up in the hand with 8 of them all at once…

Now you are always saying “Figure out what your opponents are doing wrong, then figure out why it’s wrong, then take advantage of it”. Well if you are at a table where a lot of players are seeing the flop and calling down to the river, this is wrong because they are throwing too much money into the pot with weak hands.

So to take advantage of it, I should only get my money in when I have a strong hand. In other words, if I am playing at a table full of maniacs and calling stations, with 6 or 7 players seeing the flop, I should play super-tight. Wait until I have the goods then push hard.

Of course if they all start folding when I enter a hand, then maybe they aren’t really as “fishy” as I thought they were, because now they are reading me. Then I would need to change gears.

What do you think? Am I on the right track?

Hi JSS

I only play fish in that I play microlimit poker and 70% of the players there make the mistake you are talking about.

See my results at My Blog

Basically I find that you should play tight to get these results but not too tight, as Ed has said before if the other players have low calling or raising standards then you want to be in the hand with them.

I am not advocating playing loose by any means but when you have position on these players punish them.

The starting hands Ed reccomends in SSHE are perfect for these types of players and will show a profit.

Also don’t fall into the trap I did early on of treating Strong holdings preflop too cautiously you have a lot of equity with them preflop and you should push that advantage even though you lose the post flop advantage.

Ed Explains this really well in his DVD’s

I only becaame a winning playetrr after reading SSHE and now make about 8bb/100 believe me he knows what he is speaking about.

Peter

PeterL wrote: “The starting hands Ed recommends in SSHE are perfect for these types of players and will show a profit.”

OK I’m the dummy.

I finally got over to my local bookstore and purchased a copy of SSHE. Right in the introduction Ed says that the entire book is basically devoted to answering the question I was asking here! Well at least now I know I am asking the right question so maybe there’s hope for me after all…

Thanks PeterL for setting me straight, I guess it’s time for me to stop trying to re-invent the wheel and read this book carefully. Hopefully it will turn me into a winning player just like it did for you…

My question and posts above were from nearly a year ago I see…

Boy I sure was DUMB back then wasn’t I?