Fit or Fold: Pt II - Profit

In our previous article, we discussed Fit or fold (FoF) players, their characteristics and tendencies. This sequel will show how best to play against these players, so if you've read the previous installment, you will know that FoF players are statistically vulnerable, seeing as most flops miss most hands. This means that the money that they put in the pot are usually dead money, and up for grabs for any takers. How do you profit from this? There are a few key points in your game that you need to adjust when you play against these players.

First, your hand range. Fit or fold players have a high hand range, and play more than 60% of their hands from any position. This makes them easy to identify. Note the hands they show down, e.g. 67s, T8o, and simply only play hands that are superior preflop, like KQo. This gives you a significant advantage since you're almost always going into a pot with them with a mathematical edge. Do not fall for the trap of playing a wider hand range from any position as you would need the edge to make your plays profitable. The optimal scenario would be for them to hold something like 98s, and you holding A9o and both hitting the 9 on the flop. Since they are generally passive calling stations, you can easily profit by value betting on all streets.

Second, isolate the FoF player with aggression. You can do this with calculated raises and light 3-bets. Note the general amount that the FoF player would call preflop, and also the other players to the left. When you make your isolation raises, be careful of the non-FoF players who call. They generally have a strong hand, which make them a good target if you have premium hands like AA, KK, QQ or AK. When you have the FoF player isolated, you can make profitable bets against them whether or not you hit the flop, because these players are easy to read and you can easily calculate your odds and outs against them and bet appropriately.

Continuation bets are your key weapon against FoF players. Since you should hardly ever go into a pot without a raise (avoid the FoF tendencies) unless you're trapping, you should play very aggressively against the FoF player after isolating them. Always, always, make a c-bet when they check to you on the flop even if you missed. The c-bet will give you sufficient information on whether the player has hit or missed the flop, and allow you to hit your outs if you missed and are behind, or sweeten the pot if you're ahead. E.g. the FoF player holds 45s, you hold KQo, and the flop comes 256 rainbow. FoF checks and calls your c-bet, and the turn puts a Q on the board. This puts you massively ahead as the FoF player has only 9 outs to beat you on the river. You will win this scenario 80% of the time, so bet accordingly.

Position against the FoF player is very important. FoF players are generally passive, and will call you down with any two cards that have hit the flop sufficiently well. This means that you should always tighten up when you're acting before the FoF player, and loosen up (but still keep your range above that of the FoF player) when you're acting after. If the FoF player bets into you out of position, he would generally have hit the flop and is rarely on a draw. If the FoF player calls your bets in or out of position, they may have hit the flop either by pairing up or having a draw. Note these tendencies and calculate your odds and outs so each of your subsequent bets will be profitable in the long run.

Pot control is crucial when playing against FoF calling stations. Do not get greedy and push the pot up to the point where you're committed to call a raise should the FoF player make his hand. Keep the pot as small as possible until you're sure that you have the best hand, which should only be on the river. This would generally mean that you give a free card on the turn to see where you stand when you get to the river. Once you're certain of your hand, get as much value as you can by making the FoF player pay you off on the final street. Take note of bets that they would call down on the river and make similar value bets.

Last but certainly not least, learn to fold. It's all too easy to get caught up in your aggression and try to push the FoF player off the pot with brute force. This hardly ever works as they are simply calling stations by nature. Since its all too easy to read the FoF player, you should always know when you're behind and fold. All your bets should gain you information, and be mathematically profitable depending on your reads. There's always a luck factor in poker, and any player who's behind can still catch a miracle card and come out in front. Avoid paying the FoF player off any more than you have to.

The final installment of this series will be on how to avoid playing, and thinking like a FoF player. Hope you enjoyed this article. Comments, constructive or otherwise are always welcome.

Fit or Fold: Pt I - Identify

Poker has many different types of players, ranging from the loose aggressive, to the tight passive players, but those have been discussed to death since the dawn of mankind. Fit or Fold players though (hereby referred to as FoF), are a very different species. These players don't usually worry about what their opponent holds, but focus only on making their hand. Their general tendencies are loose passive pre-flop, aggressive if they hit the flop well, and generally fold to a bet if they don't connect.

Does this sound familiar? Yep, this is a genre usually linked with amateurs and beginners. In live or online games alike, these players are always welcome to any table because they are the easiest to profit from. Have you ever seen a player sit down at a poker table, and notice that after an hour or two, their chips have diminished significantly even though they've not been involved actively in many hands, and you wonder where their chips went? Observe them closely for an orbit or two, and you'll find them playing in the exact way that I described. Bleeding chips.

FoF players have a wide range pre-flop. They play with almost any two suited cards, especially those that include a face card. 2 and even 3 gap hole cards are not out of the question either. They call with these cards from any position, regardless of stack sizes or number or players involved in the pot. They "pay to see the flop", then fold to any bet if they miss. These kind of plays are theoretically a mathematical disaster, and I'll explain why.

Statistically, the chance for any two cards to make a pair is 32%. For two suited connector cards, the chance to make a flush draw or open ended straight draw is about 11%, and after that about 30% to complete the draw if play continues to the river. This sounds good until you realize that the chance for any two hole cards to miss the flop completely is more than 60%! This means that for any unpaired hole cards that are lower than your opponent's hole cards, you need good pot odds for these bets to be profitable in the long run.

For example, if the FoF player holds cards like J9s, and calls a raise against KQo, he's about a 3 to 1 underdog pre-flop. For this to be a profitable bet, he will need at least 2.5 to 1 odds (read about odds and percentages here). Change the FoF opponent's cards to a higher pair like QQ and you're looking at a minimum of 5 to 1 odds for the bet to be profitable. So, taking all that into consideration, imagine the effect on your stack if you call most bets only to fold more than 60% of the time on the flop! That's when you will hear complaints from these players saying that they are running bad, not even hitting the flop etc, when most of the time, their losses are just due to bad play.

The next article on this topic will be on ways to take advantage of these kind of players and benefit the most from them. Stay tuned. As always, comments are welcome and appreciated.

Minimizing Losses Pt:2

First off, I'd like to apologize for not updating the blog the past three days. I have been involved in a crazy live poker schedule, and barely slept. To top it all off, I had to compensate for being away from work for a week; Yes, I do have a job!

Thanks for all the comments on the previous article. It definitely helps to know that my articles are being read! Please use the reaction checkboxes to help me gauge the article quality, and improve on site content, and if you really like the article, Digg it.

Now all that's out of the way, back to business at hand. The answer to the last hand posted was this. The CO had the flush on the turn, K high, and was trapping. He was probably also applying pot control, as there could possibly be an Ac out there, which might make a higher flush on the river. This was a great scenario to illustrate minimizing losses as it happens on both sides. To minimize losses on my end, I had to raise the turn, and fold the river. For the CO, he minimized (potential) losses by making a small bet on the turn, in case another clubs or paired card came on the river. Of course, in this particular scenario, I did not minimize my losses, and called the bet.

Pot control plays a huge role in minimizing losses. We have been talking about pot control so often, but what exactly is it? Pot control is when you know you're possibly ahead, but could be behind when the cards on the other streets come. Here's an example to illustrate this. This happened in a live game $2/$5, 8 handed table. I was on the button with 57o, and everyone from UTG folded to the CO who called. I had fantastic position here, and wanted to isolate the CO who has demonstrated that he was a loose passive player in previous hands, only getting aggressive when the opponent shows weakness. I raised to 4xBB, and SB folds, but BB surprisingly calls.

I have played with BB a lot, and consider him to be a solid player, which immediately made me wary for what he might have called me with out of position. BB had also been calling a lot of raises, so I put him on a wider range than I usually would. The flop comes 3d4d6d, which gave me the nut straight but placed a possible flush on board. I have a very aggressive reputation, and would usually place a c-bet, so action was checked to me. This would have been a very good opportunity to cash in on my reputation, as most players in a hand with me in that particular live game would generally call my c-bet regardless of what they had. However, this was also a drawback as they might outdraw me on the turn or river. This fact, coupled with the dangerous board called for pot control, so I checked.

The turn was a Qh, which may have helped either the BB or CO. BB checks, and CO bets half the pot, making it $35 to call. I call and BB calls, which makes the pot slightly less than $200. River puts a Kc on the board, which by now has me convinced that I have the best hand. BB checks once again, and CO folds without bothering to wait for me to bet or check (a strange move but a money saving one). I put a value bet of $125 into the pot, same as what I had been doing in previous hands with bluffs which was called down. BB called and mucked his hand once I showed my straight, and I took down the pot.

Would you readers have played this hand any differently? Let me know your views in the comments section.