I Fish

Thus, the first session. 100 hands.

I misjudged a little, my VPIP is 80%. The important things are that my fold to c-bet is small (0 actually). My turn fold to c-bet doesn't even occur as a statistic.

I don't think that I executed well. there were spots where I was donating, but also won fairly big pots I never would have won playing normally.

I'll start a new session soon. One thing is clear: Playing fish-style and playing well beyond the flop is not necessarily a losing play.

Another thing should be clear too. I am not trying to replace my normal game with playing fish-style. What I'm trying to do is to find a way to properly adjust to a particular type of fish in my normal game.

/Johan =

And, yes, the meta-game.

This part is wonderful because all TAGS will soon start to yell at you in the chat. You have 100% advantage over them in the metagame. I stole a fair amount of pots on the river. [Their rationale: CallinG Stations call, they donät raise.]

Nobody is going to love you.

/Johan =

Wonderful! I should try this as well. Keep us updated

I played a few more sessions after I last wrote about this. I have ended the experiment.

It was well worth doing!

My conclusions are roughly these:

• It is possible to screw up big time preflop and still be winning
• My normal play has not played particularly well versus this type of player

One obvious point: Valuebet! Don't try to blow them off a hand by c-betting. Bluffing or semibluffing is not going to work. Why even try it? For instance, don't automatically bet your flushdraws. Don't try to "protect" when it's uncertain that you have the best hand. Respect raises on the flop, and on the turn. Don't necessarily respect river raises: These guys go to the river so often that they must steal some pots on the river. If you have a winning or marginally losing (70/3/0,9/45) guy directly to your left, then he is going to be you headache that session, not the 3 regs at the table. Don't try to read the board; they may be floating all the way to the river to take it away from you there. There are probably tens of other things.

Of course, I "knew" this before the experiment. But "knowing" in theory is not the same thing as putting something to practice. I haven't played anything since my experiment, but I hope I'll handle this particular player type with a little more respect in the future, meaning that they might just know what they are doing (after the flop).

EDIT: A clarification. The fish I was emulating was loose and very passive until the river. Thin valuebetting in the form of bet-folding on the river would have been a disaster vs me because I bluff-raised (successfully) a lot more than game theory dictates.

Anybody else tried something like this?

/Johan =