Poker Strategy - Floating | PokerChannelEurope.com

| | | |

Tricks of the Trade: Floating

Floating is another one of those poker terms that didn’t even really have a name a few years ago but is now a regular part of the modern players toolbox. Floating is, sometimes, actually just a bad players clever name for making a ridiculously fishy call but when done properly it is a bluff that is more profitable than just blindly raising and demonstrates multi-street thinking that exploits those who can’t imagine anything beyond the flop.

Floating is calling a continuation bet (usually) on the flop when your hand isn’t strong, with the specific intent to bluff at the pot on a later street. So you hold king-jack on a 2-2-9 flop and, even though you haven’t improved, you call a bet from a pre-flop raiser anyway. Now, if the turn comes a blank and your opponent checks or makes a smaller bet, you read it as if they have given up on the pot and fire a bet out to take the pot down.

The reason why floating is profitable is because there are so many aggressive players who will continuation bet on the flop 100% of the time regardless of what the board texture is. When you consider that most hands don’t improve 2/3s of the time then floating is the perfect way to extract more money from a pot where you are both stealing. It is a very difficult prospect to fire a second bet on the turn when you hold nothing, especially as the call makes it look like you have a hand, and a great deal of players will give up and check the turn, giving you a free pass to steal the pot.

The most important thing about floating is that you should only really do it in position because that is where you get the information, that your opponent has given up, from. Floating out of position can get very expensive. It doesn’t hurt to float with a hand that could actually suck out on your opponent, like ace high or a gutshot, which has the potential benefit of tilting your opponent if you do hit.

You need to know already that your opponent is capable of laying their hand down and also likely to give up on the turn. Floating does not work well against hyper aggressive opponents and makes the most money from tight-aggressive players. Be fully prepared to give up on the turn if your opponent bets as it gets very expensive trying to outplay them from that point on and make sure you don’t float too often! because you’ll just become a calling station and your opponents will start value betting you very thinly or check-raising you with nothing.