$1-2NLHE, 6-Max: Adjusting against fish

$1-2 No-Limit Hold’em 6-Max Cash
$225 Pot
Villain: from Finland

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In this hand I have Ad8d on the button and pray it gets folded round so I can raise as (as mentioned in my last post) the SB kept 3-betting me (by only doubling my open) with anything. It does get folded round and I open to $5, SB routinely makes it $10, BB folds and it’s back to me. Against fish I think it is usually best to make a hand before going to war but in this case I think what the hell and go ahead and 4-bet for value IP, I make it $30. He calls and we see a flop of (J J J). My hand is soooo good here but I want to keep building a pot so I bet $25 to entice him to fish… he calls. The turn comes a Queen and it goes check-check, I check here as a bet doesn’t really achieve anything, either he has a Queen and continues (and I’m beat) or he doesn’t and can’t really fish to make a boat on the river with the Queen already there. The river comes another Queen and he leads $58 into $112. This is a bluff a huge percentage of the time by this opponent, the bet size didn’t really add up too by him, so I’ve read this to be we’re both playing the board. I’m not calling for a split so I re-bluff all-in for $180.95 and he insta-folds.

I chose to post this hand to document adjusting against fish. There were a few regs in the game and I would’ve thought they were looking at him and paying attention but surprisingly he managed to bully them around and I can say with (almost) certainty that he didn’t have it a lot of the time. This only kept the money coming my way, the regs would lose it to this fish and the fish would give it to me. I butted heads with him on many occasions and no-one really tried to get in my way, not anything out of character anyway. They weren’t adjusting, they were playing the same way with the seemingly same hand requirements as they would against me for example, which raised a question… do some of these regs just operate like bots? I mean, have they found out a system if you like of what makes them a wage on average and just stick to it. They didn’t seem prepared to deviate. This surprised me, I’d like to think I’m always on the lookout to adjust against players and styles and to change hand strengths accordingly.