What does 'Floating' mean?

Poker Strategy / Marcus Bateman / 06 July 2010 / Leave a Comment

Floating – like pretty much all advanced plays in poker – is incredibly dependent on close observation of your opponents, the board, and the general situation.

The term 'floating' in poker simply means calling a bet with the intention of trying to move a player off of a hand on a later street. Say a typically tight and scared player raises from early position and you call with a hand like 9c10c to try and crack their likely big hand. The flop comes out 4h5h7c and the player hesitantly bets about half the pot. Often in this spot, despite having missed the flop completely, it can be profitable to call and try and bluff scare cards. In this case, any heart, any six, possibly any pairing of the board or even any three or eight may allow you to move the player off of the hand with a big turn/river bet.

Floating - like pretty much all advanced plays in poker - is incredibly dependent on close observation of your opponents, the board, and the general situation. You will not be able to float loose passive players profitably - they will simply not fold if they have anything at all no matter how well you feign strength. Conversely, you will not be able to float a tight/scared player like the one in the first example on a board such as AcKs8h - it simply hits too much of their range and no matter what cards turn or river it is unlikely any of them will force a fold out of enough of their range to be profitable.

It is also a tactic that becomes much more important as games become short handed/heads up. You need to be able to call down much lighter in short handed games, and to balance your calling range against good players you need to both call with the odd big hand as well as with the odd float to set up future bluffs to stop them just running over you whenever you call. Most players tend to both over use this move in full ring games, as well as under use it in short handed games, and changing the frequency/standard of your calls short handed is just as important as changing the number of hands you play and how aggressive you are.

Although one of the most difficult plays to use in poker, floating at the right times can win you pots that your opponent never wins when the shoe is on the other foot, and this very quickly adds up to a huge edge over them. Like all of the advanced moves of poker, it is a sword that can just as easily be used to kill you as it can to kill your opponent, and must be used carefully and in the right context to be successful over the long run - but when used well can be immensely profitable.

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