Can we talk about Floating?

[Rusty Nails]

Last night I played in a tourney with a guy who seeemed to float alot (not something you see often in the smaller buyins). I've never floated much and I realized I know very little about it.

1) How important are the cards you hold? Obviously 78s is better than J4o, but how much does it matter?

2) How deep do you have to be?

3) Can you float someone OOP?

4) Is floating a conscious decision before the flop? i.e. 'This is a good float situation, if he bets weak on the flop I'm floating"?

5) In the smaller buyins raising ranges tend to be tighter (bad for floating?) but play tends to be weaker (good for floating?). Is floating effective in the $20 and under tourneys?

Anything else you can think of would be helpful

[Jeff76]

I sometimes float with garbage, and sometimes with somethin really weak like a gutshot. If I observe someone c-betting a lot and then giving up on the turn, I will float this person with any two cards, so that's a nice pattern to look for. I try to be reasonably deep when I do it, and yes it can work at low buy in tournaments.

[mornelth]

[ QUOTE ]
Last night I played in a tourney with a guy who seeemed to float alot (not something you see often in the smaller buyins). I've never floated much and I realized I know very little about it.

1) How important are the cards you hold? Obviously 78s is better than J4o, but how much does it matter?

2) How deep do you have to be?

3) Can you float someone OOP?

4) Is floating a conscious decision before the flop? i.e. 'This is a good float situation, if he bets weak on the flop I'm floating"?

5) In the smaller buyins raising ranges tend to be tighter (bad for floating?) but play tends to be weaker (good for floating?). Is floating effective in the $20 and under tourneys?

Anything else you can think of would be helpful

[/ QUOTE ]

I float in $20's and $10's all the time. Preferably early on. It works because there are so many weak-tight players in there that it's almost sad...

You can float in position or OOP, but OOP is tougher and requires more read/situational awareness.

[Rusty Nails]

Thanks for the replies.

I think a weakness in my game is that I don't call many raises. I either re-raise or fold. Thus, I haven't had a lot of experience in floating.

[pulse]

I do this a lot in position with deep stacks. Less often OOP, but if you know your opponent always checks behind on the turn when he didn't hit I sometimes like to c-call, c-c, bet. It's a pretty low risk way to pick up small pots. I wouldn't do this if you're not very good at playing after the flop, but if you feel comfortable taking a card off once in a while do it. It will help your image.

[LearnedfromTV]

[ QUOTE ]
Last night I played in a tourney with a guy who seeemed to float alot (not something you see often in the smaller buyins). I've never floated much and I realized I know very little about it.

1) How important are the cards you hold? Obviously 78s is better than J4o, but how much does it matter? If you are talking about preflop, the cards definitely matter, coldcalling a raise with 87s is a lot more likely to be profitable than coldcalling with J4o. The raiser connects with the board too often to make calling with no hand value profitable. If you are talking about the flop, hand value is less important than the board and the raiser's tendencies. If he cbets 100% and the board is A-high, that might constitute a floating spot regardless of whether you have some weak draw to back you up.

2) How deep do you have to be? I'd say 50BB+ to be coldcalling speculative stuff preflop with a significant piece of your expected equity coming from planning to take the pot away on certain boards/actions. And really 75+. As for midstream flop floats, like calling preflop with AK and then calling a board you miss to bet the turn, you can pull this off with 20-30ish BB, but you really need a good read (like ha villain has consistent, obvious, different bet sizes for c-bets vs value bets) because you risk a decent chunk of your stack to make the play. Once you get smaller than that you're in reraise or fold mode anyway. In general, the better your read, the shorter-stacked you can be and still have a profitable float situation, preflop or on the flop

3) Can you float someone OOP? Yes, but it's harder to make them fold for a reasonable price so from a risk/reward perspective you need better situations on average

4) Is floating a conscious decision before the flop? i.e. 'This is a good float situation, if he bets weak on the flop I'm floating"? see above

5) In the smaller buyins raising ranges tend to be tighter (bad for floating?) but play tends to be weaker (good for floating?). Is floating effective in the $20 and under tourneys? fit or fold types are the easiest to float. There are plenty of people who will always raise AK/AQ and check the flop if they miss, and others who will never fire a second barrel. Against these types low boards are good to float. In lower buyins, people don't fold pairs unless it's like 88 on AKJ, so once it's clear they have a decent pair, give up.

Anything else you can think of would be helpful

[/ QUOTE ]

[WSOPstar2B]

Excuse my ignorance, but does "floating" mean calling at the flop w/zip with the intention of stealing on a later street?

[mornelth]

[ QUOTE ]
Excuse my ignorance, but does "floating" mean calling at the flop w/zip with the intention of stealing on a later street?

[/ QUOTE ]

Essentially.

[Bullet_Dodger]

[ QUOTE ]
1) How important are the cards you hold? Obviously 78s is better than J4o, but how much does it matter?

[/ QUOTE ]

Are you talking about before the flop or after the flop? Before the flop, the cards definitley do matter, and so does your position. I typically don't float as much preflop, unless I'm against a conservative player who is OOP and will check/fold many flops. On the flop, your cards mean much less, as most of the time you will be betting on a bluff rather than a mde hand. But every out you do have makes the play more +EV.

[ QUOTE ]
2) How deep do you have to be?

[/ QUOTE ]

You have to be pretty deep preflop to make this move. On the flop, you don't need to be quite as deep, but as you go down in BB you need to be even more sure of your read that your opponent is weak. I would not try this with < 20 BB.

[ QUOTE ]
3) Can you float someone OOP?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, although I only try this on the flop. For example, here's a good scenario ....

You and Villain have around 50BB each, in a typical MTT tourney. You have seen Villain be pretty active postflop, taking more then his share of flops. Villain also knows you've been playing a solid game and rarley getting out of line. He raises 3x BB in MP, and you cold call with T9s in the Small Blind.

The flop comes JJ4. You check, and Villain leads for 1/2 the pot. Now, you know most of the time Villain does not have the J, and with anything else he'll probably fold to some resistance. In this spot I would just call, and fire 2/3 the pot on any turn card. It looks much more like a strong hand then leading or check-raising the flop, and Villain should lay most hands down.

[ QUOTE ]
4) Is floating a conscious decision before the flop? i.e. 'This is a good float situation, if he bets weak on the flop I'm floating"?

[/ QUOTE ]

Before the flop? No. If I'm going to float the flop it's usually a decision I make on the flop when Villain bets. It's because I feel hes weak, but I feel a raise will not look as strong and I can usually risk less.

[Jeff76]

[ QUOTE ]
Excuse my ignorance, but does "floating" mean calling at the flop w/zip with the intention of stealing on a later street?

[/ QUOTE ]Or with some kind of really weak draw like a gutshot or an underpair. This gives you two ways to win- you can take it away on the turn or hit the miracle card and stack your opponent when he really has a hand.

One caution, though: don't let "floating" be an excuse to call really weak draws. If you know villan is going to fire again on the turn don't call with just a gutshot and justify it in your mind as a float. It's just spew.