Isolating the Poker Fish in Online Poker

In poker, isolating the fish is one of the most important concepts a new player will need to grasp. When this strategy is executed correctly it will make you a lot of money. The concept is fairly straight forward to understand. When playing poker, if everyone at the table is of a similar skill level, then it would be a very difficult game to beat. Theoretically, everyone would be a marginal winner or loser, and whoever wins a particular session would come down to who was getting the cards. This is often the case when you watch two poker professionals going at it on a final table in a major live tournament. If both of the poker pros have a similar skill level, neither of them has much of an edge, and whoever wins the tournament will pretty much come down to whichever poker pro is getting the cards.

For online poker, and in particular at the low limits, you will find there are varying levels of skill level. While there may be a few experienced regulars who are grinding to make a small profit at the low limits, for the most part, the majority of players will be bad. If you have read poker articles, analyzed hand histories, read poker books, and done whatever else to improve you game, then you will definitely have an edge over the bad players AKA the fish. So you should, it takes a lot of effort to improve your game. It’s these weak players (or fish) that we want to target at the table, because they will make more mistakes then the better players.

Playing online poker is different to live in that identifying the fish requires that you analyse other information at your disposal. When playing live, you can often know who the fish are without even playing a hand against them, through their mannerism, appearance, how they talk, etc. You shouldn’t assume they are a fish, but what I am getting at is the fact that when playing live you can pickup reads quicker then playing online.

When you sit down at on online card table, your main objective is to spot the fish sooner rather then later. You don’t want another regular to take all their chips before you do. Things you will want to look at when playing online include:

Before sitting down, look at the average pot size and players/flop statistics. All the popular card rooms show these stats so make use of them. You want to play on online tables which have high average pot sizes and a lot of players who will see a flop. These high numbers indicate the games are loose, and its the loose games where all the fish hangout. Tight games are the complete opposite, there are fewer players who will see a flop due to tighter starting hand requirements, and smaller pot sizes because tight players will only continue with their hand if they have a monster.

Ok, so you have found a juicy online table with a high average pot size and high percentage of players seeing a flop. The main objective now is to identify who exactly is the fish at the table. Don’t assume they are all bad players who are spewing chips. There are a few ways to figure this out. If any of the players don’t have a full stack, you can be pretty confident they are not a good player. The regulars will often enable auto top up, so will always have a full buy-in at the very least. They like playing deep stacked to maximize value. On the other hand, the fish are playing with scared money and don’t care whether they have a full stack or not. The concept of deep stacked poker doesn’t mean a thing to fish. Another way to identify weak players at the table requires that you start playing with them and observe their tendencies. If you notice a player is doing a lot of limp/calling its another really good indicator that they are not very good.

Once you identify the fish, do yourself a favor and make a player note so you know the next time you encounter them playing online. You will know they are bad and can sit to their left at the table, if the situation allows for it, so not only will you know they are bad, but you will have position on them. Position on the fish is basically printing money.

With the knowledge of the fish at the poker table, there is another important concept to understand before you start going crazy with isolating the fish at every opportunity. You want to observe the other players at the table so will have a good idea of how they will react to your aggression. The perfect table conditions is when you are playing on a table full of fish, but they rarely happens. The next best scenario is when you have a table with 1 or 2 fish, and the other players are playing very tight. This will enable you to really open up your game and punish the fish – so isolate them at every opportunity, because you can be confident the tight players will not play back at you unless they have a hand.

If you execute this strategy sensibly, there is no reason why you shouldn’t crush the online poker games you play in.

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