October 3, 2011

Are You a TAG Fish? (part 2)

Being a TAG fish can be quite a drain on a poker prop’s earnings, in fact it can get so bad it can completely deny the advantages offered by the generous rakeback. Here are a few TAG fish symptoms to help you check whether or not you’re losing money to this sneaky ailment too.
Tag fish will often not make any difference between the button and the Cut-off calling-range wise. A TAG fish tends to consider that the cut-off is just as good a position as the button, and although it is a pretty good spot indeed, it’s just not the same. Calling with rags from the cut-off thinking you’re perfectly fine because you’ll have control of the hand playing from position is wrong: there’s one more player who will act after you and that’s enough to ruin your plans and to have you playing from early position after all.

It is generally considered that a good TAG player will abuse the opposition from the button, while a TAG fish will try to do the same from the cut-off and he’ll end up abused by the player in the button.
A TAG fish is also prone to overestimating his implied odds. Set-mining, a strategy built on the implied odds, looks so simple and attractive on paper, in reality though, those implied odds that you count on aren’t exactly as pretty. The TAG fish thinks that every time he manages to land that set, he’ll end up getting at least one player all-in and he’ll walk away with a monster pot. That however is just not the case. Sometimes, even when he makes his set, the set miner will have to go home nearly empty-handed. The TAG fish tends to lose a lot of money chasing that set (or another big hand like that) and when he finally makes it, he fails to cash in on it properly.

Post flop play seems to be the Achilles’ heel for many a TAG fish. TAG fish play well preflop. They know all there is to know about starting hand selection and about what they need to do with different starting hands to get maximum value out of them. Post-flop play is a lot more complicated though. Knowing when to let go of top pair bad kicker is something many TAG fish do not excel at. Firing that second barrel can be a difficult decision too. Post flop is where real poker begins and TAG fish seem to have leaks on that front.

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