Inside a fishbowl

Last night I continued a recent downswing, where my ass was being handed back to me many times in the form of badbeats and suckouts. I was 3 tabling and making small progress when I noticed an odd thing happening at 1 table. There were two guys minimum betting each other on late streets. eg $20 in the pot. Villain A bets $0.50, Villian B reraises to $1, A reraises to $1.50, B reraises to $2. You get the picture. After about 6 reraises villain A would call and show down 10 high...... ? My attention turned to this table. Welcome to the fishbowl.

This wasnt a one off I discovered. I tried to get involved and make some decent raises but these were called pretty quickly and then I was min bet on the river and couldnt call as I had missed all my draws. Time to readjust my game. I turned into Tight Mcnuts, I would bet my good hands and would call down my medium hands. Villains range was so wide and his bluffing was so bad that usually middle pair would be miles ahead. All my reasonable bets were being called so I was getting paid off in every way.

The guys on this table were so loose passive it was unreal. It was also quite late and I would pinch myself to see if this was real and that i was not in the middle of some poker fantasy of a dream table . Take a look at this picture and you will understand why I could not go to bed until this was over.

Ive hidden the names as they are my fish ok ! Let me explain the numbers to my readers that are unsure. Lets take my main target here. The player on the middle left of the screen with the stats top to bottom 76.7/10/1.54 This means he is playing 76.7% of his cards. Lets read that again. He is playing 3/4 of the pairs of cards he is getting. He is almost playing any two cards (ATC). He is raising 10% of his hands and his aggression factor is 1.54. The aggression factor will be discounted to me as he only minimum bets. the next 3 numbers n/a/50/0 are continuation bet/fold to cbet/reraise a cbet. the next numbers 44/53/65 are agression by street.

The number sample is only 30 hands but believe when i say that after 150 hands these numbers were even better.

Villain to left of screen was playing 80/6/1

Villain to right was playing 84/0/1.5

villian top right was playing 26/0.5/0.6

Villain top left was playing 74/20/1 as shown.

For the purpose of this post I am going to ignore Villain to immediate left. He was the better player regardless of his stats and there was no need to tangle with him.

So villains to left of screen is Villain A. His preflop raising range was 6% of his cards. According to pokerstove that is 88+, ATs,AJs,AQs,AKs,AKo,KQs. Im guessing that it was actually tighter than that.

I went card dead for an hour. I could not be creative with such a calling station. I was limping in with medum weak hands just hoping to hit a top or middle pair but nothing. I watched as the money was changed from fish to fish not going anywhere, thanking the poker gods that there was no other real good player here hitting cards. In the meantime this was the play I was seeing......

$0.25/$0.5 No Limit Holdem
5 players
Converted at weaktight.com


Stacks:

UTG		($133.50)
CO		($82.55)
BTN		($38.90)
SB		($126.74)
Hero		($93.68)

Pre-flop: ($0.75, 5 players) Hero is BB

1 fold, CO calls $0.5, 1 fold, SB calls $0.25, Hero checks

Flop: ($1.5, 3 players)
SB bets $0.5, Hero calls $0.5, CO calls $0.5

Turn: ($3, 3 players)
SB checks, Hero checks, CO checks

River: ($3, 3 players)
SB bets $0.5, Hero folds, CO raises to $1, SB raises to $2, CO raises to $4, SB raises to $8, CO raises to $16, SB raises to $32, CO calls $16

Final Pot: $67
SB shows:
CO shows:

SB wins $64 ( won +$31 )
Hero lost -$1.00
CO lost -$33.00

Are you kidding me. Give me a damn hand so I can have some of this free money. Let me hit something atleast before the ATM is broken. Look at that betting....... 1 min bet, 7 raises and a call for $16 with only bottom pair. God I f*cking love this game. It makes me really question what sort of bankroll this player has. There was no drunken chat, even with the ribbing me and another player were giving them for the limit holdem type play there was no response. 1 Table only, Bad play and no obvious tilt. This happened over and over and over again, but just not with me involved.

Finally.....

$0.25/$0.5 No Limit Holdem
6 players
Converted at weaktight.com


Stacks:

UTG		($38.90)
UTG+1		($15.40)
CO		($156.24)
Hero		($90.68)
SB		($133.00)
BB		($54.00)

Pre-flop: ($0.75, 6 players) Hero is BTN

3 folds, Hero calls $0.5, SB calls $0.25, BB checks

Flop: ($1.5, 3 players)
SB bets $1, BB calls $1, Hero calls $1

Turn: ($4.5, 3 players)
SB bets $0.5, BB raises to $1, Hero raises to $2, SB folds, BB raises to $4, Hero raises to $10, BB raises to $20, Hero raises to $40, BB calls $20
(Hahahahaha I just had to reel him in with his min reraising. I had the nut hand but was vulnerable to a flush draw. I tried to coax as much money in the pot without letting him go)

River: ($85, 2 players)
BB bets $0.5, Hero raises to $5, BB calls $4.5
(Im only losing to T8 for a higher straight but with so much money in the pot it is not a consideration. His min bet is again laughable but expected. maybe i should have pushed him all in for the $9 but i thought he might min raise me)

Final Pot: $95
Hero shows:
BB shows:

Hero wins $92 ( won +$45.5 )
SB lost -$2.00
BB lost -$46.50

He actually had a hand this time. Patience paid off. I told him I got lucky and he should reload.....so he did !!! $100 more on the table. Damn i was tired but I could not let this opportunity go. I won another $60 of this money and the other $40 was dispersed among the others. He reloaded another $40 and a few of the other players left. He stopped his min raising and I was getting tired. I ended up winning around $160 on here, putting my bankroll firmly back on track.

I reveiwed my session briefly afterwards. It was amusing to see how I had adjusted to these fish. My stats are usually around 19/12 but i was playing 30/8. I was limping loads to try to hit top/mid pair, I reduced all bluffing and only raised premium hands.

If anyone wants the names of these players I will accept $10 to release them :)


Bankroll $1840
Ryverrat