Sink, swim or FLOAT

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/03/2011 (5355 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Have you floated anyone lately? I’ve talked about the concept of floating in a previous column and how it is a great way to mix up your play.

Basically, floating is when you call a bet in position with nothing, in order to bluff your opponent on a later street. The key here is that you are in position and will be able to act last during the rest of the hand, giving you an advantage of seeing if your opponent is strong or weak. Does this mean you can only float someone when you have position on them? Well, not necessarily.

It is possible to float someone out of position. This is a very advanced move, but a very important one nonetheless.

Lets say you call a button raise from the small blind and you miss the flop completely, as you will most of the time. If you check fold to a continuation bet every time, you can become pretty predictable and easy to play against. So this is where you might consider floating out of position.

A few things you must know before trying this play are, what type of player are you up against? Is he or she aggressive and always firing a C-bet? Will he or she fire a second barrel? Or does he or she only have one bullet in the clip? How are you perceived at the table?

Say the table folds to the button and he raises. You call with J 10 of hearts and the flop comes down K 6 4 with no hearts. This is obviously not a good flop for your hand, seeing as how you have no pair and no draw, but you know quite a bit about this player. You check and he fires a C-bet. Folding here is the obvious thing do do, since you have nothing.

But you could use an advanced float and try to take the pot away on a later street. So we call and the turn is 7. Now we check again and our opponent checks behind. The river is a 2 and seeing as how our opponent didn’t bet the turn we are more than likely going to win this pot with a bet on the river, so we bet, and sure enough, he folds.

Once your opponent showed weakness on the turn by checking, that gave you the green light to go ahead and fire the river. The fact you called the flop more often than not, in your opponent’s mind, means you have something; and betting the river is even more of an indication that you have some type of hand.

Another way that you can use this type of advanced float is when the same scenario arises but instead of waiting for the river to bet, you check call the flop with nothing but then lead out on the turn. This really helps to confuse your opponents, especially since now you are betting at the pot and not checking to them again. If you get raised on the turn, then it is obviously an easy fold, but you might be surprised at how many times you can get away with this type of play.

On a side note, one of our own here at the Winnipeg Free Press, Darron Hargreaves (who, if any of you remember, was the first player knocked out of the Hold ’em for Haiti event we put on last February), won a Northern Stars Poker tournament this past Thursday. Well done, Darron. Now if only you can improve your golf game!