How to beat TAGfish

TAGfish is a term generally described about someone who has a lot flaws in their game which are easy to exploit. Below we will look at certain flaws which will be appropriate and ways in which to maximise our play against them.

Bad Hand Reading – The hand reading abilities of a TAGfish will often be relatively poor. A good percentage of the time they will be paying little attention as to what you hold and be playing on a fit or fold basis. A profitable and easy way to expose this is simply by betting hard with your made hands as they either call down light or chase draws.

Uncreative and predictable – More often the not a TAGfish will fire few bluffs and rarely take lines trying to exploit your weaknesses. It’s likely that they will be betting their hands for value or simply calling down with draws or weaker holdings. Putting these players into situations where they feel uncomfortable or feel out of their depths can often result in taking the pot down before showdown.

Poor Adjusting Skills – Similarly to their bad hand reading skills it’s unlikely that a TAGfish will make adjustments to things such as bet sizing changes you make against them in game time. This makes balancing your range something that you won’t need to think about too much. A good way to take value from this flaw is bet small with holdings such as draws in an attempt to get better pot odds and betting larger with made hands for value.

Too Aggressive/ Too Tight – A TAGfish will more often than not play either too many hands and too aggressively or too few hands and passively. The skill of working out a medium of the two simply won’t be apparent to them. It shouldn’t take too long to work out which they are doing, before being able to take advantage and adjust your game accordingly.

Easy to tilt – Another one of their many flaws will be the fact that they are prone to tilt. Minor things like being shown a bluff or getting outdrawn in a hand can set them off. It’s at these points where you need to take advantage and really get value with your big hands whilst they are still steaming from previous hands.

Bad Seat/ Table Selection – TAGfish will take next to no care in where they are placed at the table or even which table they are sat at. Often you will see them out of position to the regulars which will be sketchy situation for anyone, never mind a poor player.

Passive on the river – Whilst not folding through the streets in chase of any kind of draw or even low pairs, when it comes to the river they will be playing fit or fold in its truest form. Whilst you may not get them to fold top pair, there’s a good chance you can fire on blank rivers where draws have been apparent on earlier streets in the attempt to get them to fold.

Ideally you want to be using a poker tool such as Pokeredge so that you can easily spot all the above leaks and many more when you play against a TAGfish.

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