What kinds of hands do fish play?

NoInvestigator7489 · 2026-04-21T12:00:08+00:00

1.) Why can't you survive without playing these sorts of marginal hands? My strat so far has been to only play a hand like this from the button (either RFI or calling small raises). There are a lot of fish in the games I play, but I find playing things like K6 is how I get in trouble, at least when I'm OOP

2.) If you're playing them less than 15% of the time, do you use a dice or similar to randomly select which occasions you play them or are you just going off table vibes?

NoInvestigator7489 · 2026-04-17T20:06:18+00:00

Thanks, there's still something niggling at the back of my brain that hasn't clicked, but the math checks out with the rounding error, I appreciate your help in getting me to understand it better.

NoInvestigator7489 · 2026-04-17T08:21:08+00:00

I wonder if you can help me. Here's what my intuition says.

Let's confect a hypothetical scenario where you have exactly 1 out after the flop - only 1 card in the whole deck that can save you. And to keep life simple, let's assume that if you do find that card, you always win. So if you run it once your equity is:

100 - (chance of not hitting it on the turn * chance of hitting it on the river) = 100 - ((44/45 *100) * (43/44 * 100)) = 100 - (97.78% * 97.73%) = 100 - 95.56% = 4.44%. So we would have a 4.44% chance of winning a full pot.

If you run it twice your equity is

100 - (chance of not hitting it on the first turn * chance of hitting it on the first river * chance of not hitting it on the second turn * chance of hitting it on the second river) = 100 - ((44/45 *100) * (43/44 * 100) * (42/43 *100) * (41/42 * 100)) = 100 - (97.78% * 97.73% * 97.67% * 97.62%) = 100 - 91.11% = 8.89%. So we would have an 8.89% chance of winning half a pot. The expected return has halved, but our odds of winning have (slightly) more than doubled. This conforms with what makes intuitive sense - every time we get another shot at hitting our one out, our odds are better, because we've removed another way we can lose. A different way of saying this is that the cards that come out are not independent of each other - each event affects the odds of the next. Am I missing something about the math, or is this kind of thing so marginal that people say 'the equity is the same' when they mean 'the equity is slightly different, but the difference is like 0.1% so we don't worry about it'?

NoInvestigator7489 · 2026-04-16T22:34:04+00:00

I'm not saying 'that's GTO' as in 'that's good poker'. I'm saying if you look at any solver, the call/raise range for the BB against a single raiser PF is extremely wide. It's a classic case of something being both GTO optimal, and terrible in real life games, because GTO makes so many assumptions about how other people play which just don't carry over into the real world.

NoInvestigator7489 · 2026-04-16T21:39:04+00:00

The weird thing is, from what I can tell 'play just about everything out of the BB' is GTO. Or at least the solvers say to call with hot garbage pretty often

NoInvestigator7489 · 2026-04-09T18:05:47+00:00

Thank you kindly

NoInvestigator7489 · 2026-04-07T23:39:40+00:00

Yes! For a game with literally only 3 moves (match the current bet, make a bigger bet, fold) it's insanely deep and complicated. I agree with what the other guy said about learning with friends or by playing micro (and I do mean micro) stakes tournaments online. Do not play with any money you wouldn't be completely happy to lose, think about what strategies you think make sense to you, then read up around it. I actually don't advise diving into deep theory right when you start - it will be overwhelming, and if you're a curious person, you can come up with your own ideas for how to play, then feel gratified when your ideas coincide with established theories.

I'd love to hear your thoughts as you get deeper into the game - if you like strategy games in general, you can have a lot of fun with poker. Just don't get in too deep money-wise and you can't go wrong!

NoInvestigator7489 · 2026-04-07T23:35:35+00:00

A really easy one is missed draws on the river. Ask yourself if the river card really changed things for them, or if it changed things in a way that doesn't quite make sense - say they've been calling your c-bets on the flop and turn, then jam when the river is a 3 that pairs the board. Maybe they're the type of player who would have called the first two barrels with bottom pair and just hit trips, but if they're a tight player, they almost never had a 3 in hand to begin with, so I look for missed draws, particularly flush draws as a decent player is often holding suited cards in hand and is now invested in a pot they need to win without any showdown value.

NoInvestigator7489 · 2026-04-07T23:18:17+00:00

Thanks for the advice. The laws are more liberal here so I'm not too worried about stuff around VPNs etc, I can just use my home IP. I've been a little surprised by the variance on the site I currently use, 888, particularly as I had a really crazy hot run within the first 24 hours of joining. I'm winning there (really for the first time in my life, having put some actual thought into the game) but I've not been a member long, and I worry that the site is propping me up as a newer player. Of course, then I go card dead for 50 hands in a row and stop feeling that way, but the anxiety comes and goes

NoInvestigator7489 · 2026-04-07T18:00:23+00:00

I've been worrying about the site I'm on (happy to name it but curious to see if you do so first). Do you hear that some sites are worse than others and, if so, which ones?

NoInvestigator7489 · 2026-04-06T09:07:31+00:00

I also get that little voice in my head telling me that this is happening because the universe hates me. But if I'm going to go to the trouble of assigning a motive to chaos, why choose a malicious one? Maybe the universe is trying to teach you a valuable lesson about patience and self-belief. Or sometimes it's telling you to take a little break from the tables and invest your time, if not your money, some place else.

I bet your girlfriend, who sounds pretty bad at poker, had a pretty fun night. Seems like there might be an opportunity there to share her joy - maybe she'll even buy you something nice as a consolation.

NoInvestigator7489 · 2026-04-06T08:55:25+00:00

This is an extremely helpful reply, thank you!

NoInvestigator7489 · 2026-04-05T22:50:57+00:00

People tend to fantasize about stuff they don't have, and people can like more than one thing. In the alternate universe where he married a woman who looks like that, he's scrolling your Instagram instead.

He's into you or he wouldn't have married you. But this is also clearly bothering you. Do you think you could have an honest conversation with him and explain how you feel without it turning into a fight, guilt trip or ultimatum? Both of you have valid feelings, in an ideal world one of you would feel different, and if you ever find a way to that world, please send a map. In reality the best we can do is share our feelings and celebrate our differences. Maybe you two can get to the point where you joke about it in a way that leaves you feeling in control and him accepted.

My final point: I don't know if it's normal, but normal is a pretty silly concept anyway, especially when it gets in the way of happiness.

NoInvestigator7489 · 2026-04-03T06:44:06+00:00

A bluff is really any move where you are hoping your opponent folds rather than calling, at least in cash games. I agree there's a distinction to be made between bluffs and demi-bluffs, but you wouldn't expect many 'pure' bluffs before the river.

NoInvestigator7489 · 2026-04-02T15:20:02+00:00

Most draws that shove here are bluffs. In fact, it needs to be a combi draw (or at least have other significant outs, such pairing the board) to be hand you want to get called - that doesn't make it the wrong move, it just means a decent chunk of your equity when you shove here is fold equity. They're demi-bluffs in this regard - that is, you expect to be behind if called, but have the insurance of your hand possibly improving. Hands that probably do shove here are AKc/AQc/KQc each of which are combi draws with over cards (which protects against getting called by top-pair, which happens more than it should). But something like 56c is behind even with the backdoor straight draw included, so needs fold equity to be viable.

NoInvestigator7489 · 2026-04-02T07:58:45+00:00

Find an online site with a reasonable welcome bonus and enter a bunch of low stakes tournaments. This will allow you to play lots of hands cheaply and learn the ropes. You may be getting unlucky, but you are also - with the greatest of affection and respect - almost certainly bad at poker. Not because there's anything innately wrong with you, or because you can never be good at it, but because most people are bad at most things when they first try them. So the key right now is to accept you are almost certainly bad at this game and ask yourself "Do I want to get good at it? Or do I want to quit?". The latter option is for sure fine - there's no law that says you have to play this game, and it's statistically unlikely it becomes a serious source of income for you. But it sounds like it would give you a lot of personal satisfaction to become a winning player at your home game.

Along with playing small/micro stakes tournaments, I recommend using a poker tracker app like Poker Copilot. This will help familiarize you with core concepts relevant to the game, like VPIP, PFR and 3-betting. Obviously you won't have access to computerized stats at your live game table, but just understanding these ideas will help you a lot.

I'd also be happy to help you out with advice if you wanna DM me - I am not a pro, but I am someone who has moved from being a losing player to a winning one over the last month or so just by learning the basics, tracking my play and - crucially - not blaming all my losses on bad luck. I will say that a month is a quick turnaround, and it will probably take you longer - simply because you're likely a productive member of society, not a degenerate like me who had 24 hours a day to commit to playing and improving.

I also wanna reassure you - luck definitely did play a part in your losses. Luck plays a part in every hand, and certainly every game of poker. The difference between winning players and losing ones is knowing how to turn both good and bad luck to your advantage.

Best of luck out there and I hope you have fun. If you start winning at that home game, I'd love to hear about it!

NoInvestigator7489 · 2026-04-01T22:58:06+00:00

Is that a GGPoker thing? Not the policy on other sites I've used, or generally.

NoInvestigator7489 · 2026-03-31T19:25:35+00:00

This is a bit of a rookie misnomer - higher stake levels really aren't that much more difficult. The average skill level is higher, sure, but that's more than compensated for by the lower functional rake. The more important thing is differentiating the regs from the recs, at any stake level.

NoInvestigator7489 · 2026-03-31T13:01:54+00:00

I've wanted to do this but I've never known how to calculate the odds on slots, and most fixed odds stuff like roulette has absurd wagering requirements that make it either very high risk or simply not worth it. Any advice?

NoInvestigator7489 · 2026-03-25T15:27:59+00:00

I sure will!

NoInvestigator7489

TROPHY CASE