Isolating a Poker Fish: A Complete How To Guide

If you read this blog regularly then you will know that I am constantly preaching the importance of playing with bad poker players or fish as they are commonly known. But once you find them and get the right seat against them the game doesn't stop there.

Many people make the mistake of simply waiting for a "good hand" to get involved and win a big pot. This strategy will work of course but it is by no means optimal. The best regs will instead go out of their way to get in as many pots as possible with the fish in order to make sure that they get that stack before anyone else.

They do this by continually isolating the bad players with a wide variety of hands both in position and out of position. So in this article I am going to show you exactly how I go about isolating the fish at the poker tables and winning the maximum against them. 

What Does it Mean to Isolate the Fish?

First things first, what does it actually mean to "isolate the fish?" When you isolate somebody at the poker table it means that you target them in an effort to get the pot heads up postflop.

The ideal situation is having the fish all to ourselves after the flop in order to exploit the myriad of mistakes that they are likely to make. 

Typically we will try to isolate the fish after they limp preflop (just call the big blind). This is of course something that they love to do. You will see many fish for instance with stats that look something like this:

VPIP: 53

PFR: 6

This means that they play 53% of the hands that are dealt to them but they only raise with 6%. So the vast majority of the time that they enter the pot it is by just calling the big blind. You should frequently raise up the pot when they do this.

• I recommend raising it to 4x the big blind

A standard open raise is typically 3x the big blind and I recommend adding an extra big blind per limper. Hence the 4x the big blind versus one limper.

For all my bet sizing recommendations and charts with what hands to play, grab a copy of my free poker cheat sheet.

Here is an example poker hand where we isolate a fish:

But isolating the fish can also refer to 3Betting them. Once again you are raising in an attempt to isolate them and get the pot heads up.

• I recommend making it 3x their original open when you are in position (IP)
• I recommend making it 4x their original open when you are out of position (OOP)

If the fish comes into the pot for a mini-raise (as they often like to do) then I would recommend making it 4x IP and 5x OOP. By increasing the size of our re-raise we force them to play a regular sized 3Bet pot if they wish to continue.

What Kind of Hands Should You Isolate the Fish With?

This depends on the type of game that you are playing in. One of the biggest reasons why the very lowest stakes online (NL2, NL5 and NL10) are beatable for such high winrates is because the regulars tend to be very passive. 

That is, they will essentially let you have your way with the fish unless they happen to have a good hand themselves. 

This is not the case at higher limits. The regs there think about the game on a deeper level and therefore they know how important it is to get the fish's stack quickly and they will fight you for it. 

But in this article I am going to assume that you play at the lower limits where you can get away with murder against the fish for the most part. 

In these games I suggest isolating the bad players with a range as wide as:

• The top 50% of hands in position
• The top 40% of hands out of position

What does this mean in terms of actual hands? 

Top 50% of hands marked in yellow

Top 40% of hands marked in yellow

Now it is important not to get too hung up on the actual hands listed above. I just plugged these ranges into Pokerstove (link to this free program on my resources page) and this is what it came up with. You could take some hands out and include some others.

Also, it should be noted that I am talking about when the bad players limp here. I am certainly not 3Betting them with 40% or 50% of hands. It will be far, far less than this and include a lot of premium hands.

The real takeaway from these two charts is just how wide I am willing to isolate the fish when they limp. I will be raising them up with anything that looks even remotely playable.

For example, have a look at this hand where we have A8 offsuit in the small blind:

Why the Difference Depending on Position?

Now you might be asking yourself why I isolate with a slightly tighter range when I am out of position. The reason why is because when you have to act first after the flop it makes it much more difficult to value bet and bluff the bad players. 

You are always going to win far more in poker versus any type of opponent when you are in position and get to act last after the flop. So in order to compensate for my positional disadvantage I will in fact "tighten up" versus the fish when out of position. 

But something else I will do is increase the size of my preflop raise. So instead of making it 4x the blind as I mentioned before, I will make it 5x or 6x instead.

By increasing the price that they have to pay in order to see the flop this allows me to take down a few more pots uncontested preflop. When we are OOP this is a perfectly acceptable outcome.

3 Reasons Why You Should Isolate the Fish This Wide

The reason why I isolate the bad players with so many hands (and sometimes even more) is because I understand that my winrate is directly attributable to how often I am playing against them.

As I have mentioned several times before, you aren't going to ever turn a big profit against the regulars. These are players who typically take the game seriously like you do. 

Even though this doesn't mean that they are necessarily good, they simply do not make the massive preflop and postflop errors that recreational players do. Therefore, your edge against even the very worst regs will never be close to what it is versus the fish.

So I want to focus heavily on playing against the bad players but I can't sit around waiting for the nuts either because good hands only come around so often.  

So here are 3 reasons why it is absolutely fine and recommended in fact that you play a lot of hands versus the fish. 

1. They Are in There With All Sorts of Random Junk Themselves

Have you ever really taken a good look at the kind of nonsense that fish usually show up with at showdown? They will regularly show up with hands like:

• K♠2♦, 9♥4♥, T♣5♠, 2♦3♣, A♠4♣

They aren't exactly waiting for the nuts themselves! So why should we?

Even though we will be playing a lot of "trashy" hands (as you saw in the charts above) our opposition is playing at least as many bad hands. So therefore, we aren't putting ourselves at any sort of disadvantage.

2. We Have a Huge Postflop Edge

It isn't always about the actual hand itself though in poker. It is about the person playing the hand. The reason why the fish lose so much in the long run is because they constantly do dumb stuff like this:

• Call down with bottom pair
• Call down with ace high
• Call down with a gutshot straight draw
• Call down with two napkins

It is almost like they aren't given a fold button and a raise button like the rest of us. They just like to call, call and call some more.

Therefore they often end up calling down with too many losing hands and they rarely give themselves an opportunity to win the pot by bluffing. 

They also have no clue about the importance of position in poker and therefore they end up fighting an uphill battle all too often. 

Since we don't make these mistakes we already have a massive advantage over them postflop. This is why we can easily get away with playing a few crappy hands like they do.

3. You Have to Get Involved in Order to Win!

Probably the most important reason though why you need to play a lot of hands against the fish and isolate the crap out of them is because you can't win if you keep folding preflop. 

There is a reason why the top winners at any stake are never nits. You simply can't win big if you aren't involved in the action. 

The other thing (and I am going to talk about this a lot more next week) is that when you are constantly getting involved with the fish you are creating what I call a "dynamic" against them. 

This means that there is a playing history between the two of you. And the more that you are involved raising them up and constantly sticking a CBet in their face the more that they are going to view you as a maniac who is abusing them. 

There is absolutely nothing in the world that a fish cherishes more than his/her own pride. Fish literally live to make the big hero call and to show up the "bully" at the poker tables.  

So some of my biggest winners versus these players actually come from terrible hands like T♥5♥. And all I did was hit top pair and go bet, bet, shove. 

Someone looking from the outside might view me as a reckless maniac who just got lucky against a terrible player who could not find the fold button. 

Nothing could be further from the truth though.

What they didn't see is that I had been applying constant pressure for a dozen hands before this. I knew that the fish was absolutely fed up with me and therefore I could get away with massively overplaying what is normally considered a weak top pair hand. 

Conclusion

Isolating the fish on a consistent basis is an integral part of your success at the poker tables. It is not enough to just find them and get the right seat against them. In passive micro stakes games you should be going out of your way to get in pots against them by isolating them with as much as the top 50% of hands. 

But even when out of position you can still get away with raising the bad players up with a wide range as well. The key here is to get involved in an many pots as you can against them and utilize your superior postflop abilities. 

An added benefit of constantly hammering on the fish is that it tends to tilt them very easily and absolutely nothing is more profitable at the poker tables than a fish on tilt. 

Let me know how you go about isolating the fish in the comments below. Are there any trouble spots that you encounter when raising them up?

Lastly, for my entire strategy, grab a copy of my free poker cheat sheet.

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