Are fish good or bad?

I'm confused as to why having lots of fish at the table is a good thing. Granted, they make a lot of mistakes, but they tend to be loose-agressive maniacs - next to impossible to read.

An ideal table would probably consist of only a few fish, to spice the pot, and a healthy selection of decent players to actually play the game with.

Any thoughts on this?

you win more from fish. fishing for a hand is not good.
I like fish, i tend to get them in a big pot

No the best table would only have fish.
Good players dont make there money of other good players,they make it off bad players(fish).
So u want to be seated with as many bad players as possible.
And fish are a lot easier to read then good play since they never balance there range or mix it up(excepted when they go on tilt and start spewing more then normal)

IF you adapt your play accordingly, then the more fish the better.

But you have to be aware of the schooling effect, where a fish calls with incorrect odds, but then others call as well and improve his pot odds to a point where his call wasn't so bad after all. If you give them good implied odds later in the hand by overvaluing overpairs or top pair hands in multiway pots, then you make their plays correct and you become the fish.

Fish are obviously a good thing , I guess your talking about micro stakes fish, if you are dont bluff unless you know they have nothing and wont call. I have been trying to make a switch to cash games and thereforehave been playing micro stakes recently and one of them called with pair of Kings with five kicker to about 3/4 pot bet on the river on dangerous board this just prove the point that they will call down with anything. So all you have to is sit tight and when you get a hand make them pay big time for calling you down with junk.

If you think that hold'em fish are hard to read, you should see the omaha fish they dont even know what their hand is so even if you do get a read it may be what the fish thinks he has not actually does have.

Schooling effect, eh? Interesting ...

Any more fish traps to avoid?

You may loose to a fish in the short term... but in the long run you will take all there money. So get it before someone else does lol

I was going to mention the schooling effect...

When playing a large number of fish, collectively they form a formidable opponent, because they see far too many flops, and play draws with little regard for odds and long term win rates, its quite easy to be outdrawn. Ok each fish is still a fish and will loose in the long run, but collectively they can be difficult to play agains.

I would say that the ideal situation is to have 3 or 4 fish at the table and 3 or 4 decent players.. that way the decent players will slow the fish downa bit and make them easier to play against

just give me some fish to my right and some 5/1/1 on my left and I will be happy with it.

This is very fascinating, and none of the recommended introductory poker books seem to mention it. A serious deficiency, IMHO.

Of course, it is still not clear how to handle a school of fish.

Play heads up.

How to handle a school of fish?

well here are a few pointers.

Firstly forget about fold equity.. no matter how scary a flop looks.. fish do not fold, hence they often (collectively) out draw you.

Second forget about bluffing. If a fish looks down and sees second pair... its going to be hard to get him to fold. Again this ties in with reduced fold equity.

Third, do not overvalue top pair, top kicker. You are likely to get outdrawn.

If the pot is small.. then play but once it gets bigger forget about any hand lower than a set.

Play tight out of position and very loose when in position preflop. This is because when you are in position you are very unlikely to be raised by the blinds. Its worth seeing the flop with very speculative hands but be very prepared to fold if the flop dosent hit you.

Do not try and do anything fancy with fish. they will not understand what you are trying to do and consequently fancy plays will not show a long run profit.

Yeah but isnt that the problem with a table of fish? Its difficult to get into a heads up position because of how loose the table is preflop?

Well I sarcastically meant to switch to a heads up table :P. But there's 2 ways to combat schooling:

1) Raise & bet more. If they're loose enough to call pot-sized bets with overcards or a gutshot, crank it up and jam your whole stack in if that's what it takes. You'll get less calls, and the calls you do get will be bigger mistakes. I can routinely sit down at a play money table and multiply my stack by 10 quite quickly playing top pair hands against these idiots.

2) Play more drawing hands, and draw with good draws right along with them.

No I honestly find it better to have a few decent player in the mix.. fish are profitable, but they are more profitable when they are cooled down a little by decent players.

LOL sorry I get it now!!

How can that be? When fish go against fish they throw a lot of money around. If you have an advantage you want to play for these big pots. Yes, you will have more severe swings, but overall you will make more by tightening up and letting them destroy themselves on your big hands.



That is, instead of playing for a $3 pot when I'm 60% to win PF, I'd rather play for an $8 pot when I'm only 30% (because of the larger field) to win PF.

And with implied odds... Fish have trouble letting go of big pots. So if you can catch one with TPTK you can often stack them.


The swings might suck, but you make more money. Heck, the swings probably *help* you, because people sucking out against each other puts them on tilt, which works in your favor.


As for having good people at the table... when money shifts, I want it to go from a fish to me. Or from Fish A to Fish B. I don't want it going to someone smart enough to hold on to it, or use it against me. I also don't want someone to exploit me exploiting the fish (IE, chasing me off my isolation bets and such).

But fold equity works in two ways, i.e.

(1) You raise for an amount that would make it wrong for your opponent to call.

(2) You only call bets if the pot odds exceed your drawing hand odds.

When fish-handling, do you you neglect both (1) and (2)?

By fancy play, do you mean things like check-raising, and so on?

You don't know what fold equity is. Its the value you get from making players fold better hands.

Oops ... sorry.

Well, I guess that answers my question.

This only applies to a table of fish.. as said before each individual fish plays incorrectly but their tendency to overcall COLLECTIVELY makes them harder to play against. You need the absolute nuts to be confident of getting cash into the pot. Saying that.. when that happens.. you should get a nice payout.

fishy fishy fishy fish, where art thou oh fishy fish

send em my way-with some tartar

fish, for as lucky as they can be, dont understand odds, and SHOULD lose way more often than winning

if not for fish the game would be so dry and boring..... no blow ups only correct calls commmon we need fish they are our bank roll builders..... they are New york Cities founding imigrants they are our taxi drivers! Take one for a ride today!

fish = easy, soft, no clue

donk = maniac, some clue but either no patience or just plays for bingo thrills, stupid but dangerous


therefore,

fish .....good, tourny or cash

donks......good and bad
bad for tourney as they can ruin you, but can also be good cause you can take all their chips with the right hand.....

and always good for cash games cause they always give up the chips in the end

Fish are bad because they enter the hand and stay in the hand with bad to terrible hands. If you have tons of fish at your table, I would suggest becoming 'the rock' in which you play tight-aggressive. this way can earn you some serious bucks. One way to start looking for fish(fishing) is to sort ring games by the % of players seeing the flop. This statistic will help you out greatly.

fish are good to play with, but you also have to understand that they will win a few hands once in a while. or sometimes more often. most of the time though, if you play tight, solid poker, you will win big because they don't know how to fold.

Fish might be profitable, but they sure aren't fun. They cramp your style, forcing you to play like a rock. You can't mix it up a little, because they won't learn. You can't play tight at first, and then loosen up, hoping to pull off a few bluffs. Basically, you win because you're patient enough to wait until you're favored by lady luck, and you actually flop a good hand or draw.

be prepared to take some bad beats with the fish and keep your patience. in the long run the better player should win....should.

ok so i just got knocked out of a big tournament by a stupid fish after two awful beats, and i want to change what i said a little. yes, fish can be profitable, but you also need a little luck. just because you have them dominated at the flop doesn't mean they won't suck out and make bottom pair to your overcards. i guess they're harder to play against than i thought before, and plus they have us going on tilt on their side...

This is exactly what Zach was saying above about variance. Getting your money in as a 60:40 favourite means that you will lose 40% of the time, and you will have swings in your results.

But if you've got a skill advantage over the fish, then in the medium to long term you'll take their money and you'll win a lot more than if you were playing against skilled players, or if there were some skilled players at the table to go with the fish.

Good fish , wouldn't that be one of them there oxymorons?

When people refer to "fish" are they strictly referring to ultra aggressive maniacs? I think there are a variety of fish that you can take advantage of:

Maniacs: If you have said "fish" covered, give them bad odds to draws and otherwise just play normal straightforward poker (no bluffing, no slow playing though c-bets are fine). If they have you covered, you're probably going to have to revert to playing very tight and if they get lucky, hey, this is poker we're talking about.

Weak tight players: Steal, steal, steal! You need to be able to identify these people and you need the ability to lay down good hands but once you can do this, your bubble play gets a whole lot better.

For the most part, if it were not for the fish we would not not be here.

I agree somewhat.
I dont want to make a raise with a good starting hand and get called by 6 people at the table.
So in that aspect i want a couple decent players at my table,so that my aces or kings wont get out drawn by 5-8 other people calling ridiculous raises.