Intermediate Level Poker Strategy – Floating the Flop

While mastering the basics of Holdem and Omaha is imperative for ever becoming successful at the online poker tables, the time comes for even a successful player to consider further options in the way of diversifying and further fine-tuning his/her game. There are always ways for even good players to make more money by putting the squeeze on their opponents in new and improved ways. The floating of the flop is an intermediate level poker move, most often and most successfully applied by those players who have moved past the basic level of poker thought. Having attained a higher level poker thought is indeed a strict requirement for successfully floating flop because in order to successfully do it, a player needs to have a thorough understanding of his/her opponents.

What exactly does it mean to float the flop though? When floating the flop, a player is essentially calling an opponent’s continuation bet on the flop, with the intention of firing out a bet on the turn, in case the opponent shows weakness by checking. Why do players float the flop? In order to defend against the continuation bet. In this day and age, there are countless players out there abusing the power of the c-bet. Because most of these guys are beginners rather than advanced pros who know how to properly deploy this strategy piece, the floating of the flop becomes a rather efficient counter against them.

For players who use it correctly, the floating of the flop will work wonders, allowing them to win more post-flop confrontations, regardless of the hands they happen to hold.

Unlike with some of the other – more basic – strategy moves, properly vetting the opposition against which it is deployed is extremely important in the case of flop-floating. The ideal opponent to float the flop against is the classic TAG player, who does a lot of pre-flop raising, followed by continuation bets. There are plenty of such players online, so finding a target for the flop-floating shouldn’t be a problem at all.

Being the subtle move that it is, flop-floating also needs to be timed carefully: players should never attempt it when out of position. While it can indeed be applied in pretty much every Texas Holdem and Omaha cash game and tournament, the floating of the flop is best done in deep-stacked games because it requires two streets of action to pull off.

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