How to Spot a Fish at Low Stakes 

Look at the Number of Hands the Opp Plays

Even if you see a player in your games daily, playing long hours, even with some winnings under their belt, it doesn’t mean they’re a regular and “professional poker player”.

According to Fedor Holz, weak players at low stakes do not understand which hands to play from which position. Thus, they end up open and playing too many hands.

• If you are playing live, you should watch closely how often a player folds own hands in comparison to limping or calling in hope to see a flop.
• If you are playing online, you can identify weakness even faster by checking player’s Voluntarily Put $ in Pot (VPIP stats) on different positions and comparing their hands that reached showdown with the theoretically optimal opening preflop ranges. You can use PokerListings’ reference sheet of ranges from here: Poker Positions Explained.

Remember the simple principle from Fedor: the earlier your position is, meaning, the more players are behind you to act, the less hands you can open.

So, if your opponent opens too wide or too tight at least from the early positions, and this isn’t just your perception but a statistically confirmed fact, you can consider them a weak player and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Look How the Opponent Reacts to Bets & Loses

Weak players aren’t just bad at playing poker. They also can’t properly handle aggression, stress or disappointment. This goes for any stakes but for low stakes especially, because they’re more affordable to a wider audience and have a significantly higher rate of occasional players than more expensive games. 

If your opponent tends to:

• Jam with the next hand after losing a significant pot
• Spam with angry emojis and throw balls or texts in the chat
• Fold every hand after facing bet, raise or jam no matter the stack sizes or cards on the board
• In live game games, completely change their behavior showing signs of stress, annoyance or anger after some hands or even when the hand is live.

All these could be signs of a weak player that you can exploit. With that said, remember that some professional players can act “crazy” to lull your vigilance and backstab you when you expect it the least. So, rely on a a larger sample and not just a few hands to make a decision about who you’re dealing with at the table.

Look If There Are Hands the Opp Can’t Let Go

As Alex Fitzgerald and Topher Goggin explains in their book “Improve Your Poker Now: A Guide For Serious Amateurs”, at low stakes, weak players often have a soft spot for some questionable hands because in their head, these could bring something valuable later on.

For example, weak players often go crazy for all kinds of:

• Suited hands —> they can bring a Flush!
• Off suited connectors —> they can bring a Straight!
• Aces or Kings with any kicker —> I mean, does this even need to be explained?
• Small pairs —> deuces never loses, baby!

So, following player’s stats on showdowns and considering occasional voluntary showing of hands when folding, you can identify if your opponent tends to favor certain hands or combinations.

Remember, the weak players also can’t let go of the Top Pair Top Kicker (TPTK) even if they have nothing but this hand and it is horribly disconnected from other cards on the board.

However, be sure to collect enough hands for analysis before making your final judgment. Sometimes players mis-click or misread their hand at the table (or just run hot!) so you don’t want to mistakenly label them weaker too early on and end up paying the price later on down the road.

Bonus: Look in the Mirror

If you’re regularly playing poker professionally, semi-professionally or as a serious amateur and can’t identify fish at the table, it’s possible that you’re this fish.

Just joking, of course, this advice is about regularly checking your own stats and tendencies to identify and remove leaks that move you closer to the weaker folks.

Studying and self-testing are both vital processes to avoid playing a weak game. So, continue being attentive to your own actions, adjust consistently and ask other players or even coaches for feedback from time to time. An outsider’s perspective could spot something that may be too familiar and therefore unnoticeable to you.