ok, bank holiday Friday so started my positive thinking (you did mean that Yegor?). So far so good – played a $20 and won it. Small sample size though.

I’m not posting about a single $20 win obv but about how sharkscope is a bit of a double edged sword. I sat first since all the tables were empty and when someone joined me I sharkscoped them just out of interest. It’s funny how a little frisson of pleasure (or relief) appears when you see that little jumping goldfish by their name So I thought this should go ok (damn, positive thinking failed pretty quickly there – should have been thinking, yeah! in the bag man! Oh well).

As it turned out the game was a real PITA, and I came pretty close to losing it a few times. The guy’s weakness was that he’d go to showdown with any piece of the board. The eye opener was when he called down with Q7 on a board of 34973. He also held onto strong Ace rags to the bitter end, hitting on the river several times after I’d barreled the earlier streets.

That meant I had to hold back and just hope I hit the board enough to value bet him out of the game. Bluffs were going to be useless. Fortunately I was given those opportunities and it went my way. Just as well really as I think if it hadn’t my positive state of mind would have taken a huge battering.

Somewhat shaken by that near miss I added him to my buddy list and saw that he’d sat down again at a $40 hunsg (martingales perhaps?). I opened the table to see he was already started against someone. I sharkscoped his opponent and this is what I saw;

He’d sat with the 16th biggest winner on the cereus network. Should be interesting I thought so I railed the game.

It went quite differently to my game. Vulcain999 played very small – minraising pre and folding easily to flop bets. He didn’t seem to make any big aggressive moves and didn’t commit himself to large pots. Chesta69′s tendencies that I saw in my game didn’t seem to arise mainly because they just weren’t going to showdown.

As the game progressed it became more aggressive, and most of the gains were made in preflop 3bets. Vulcain999 was never ahead in chips, and finally he made a strong move which was called down with a low top pair (on a 3 to the flush board) and showed a complete bluff. The ranked player made the losing player’s leak into the right play, possibly because he just hadn’t gained that information earlier in the match.

I think why I’m posting this is partly motivated by Simon’s post where he decribes a fish he played against 4 times and lost. In husngs understanding the opponent is the main thing – is he a station, a bluffer, a maniac. Will he fold to a cbet on a dry board or a drawy board etc. I’m saying the obvious here really. However, to objectify your opponent as simply a ‘fish’ doesn’t help. Even a fish’s bad move can be the right move if we play into it.