Keeping fishies around

[Russ McGinley]

Live $2 table

Table is full of your typical card room fish. Only one player (other than me) thinks about his hands preflop, and this guy seriously asked me to be his poker coach.

Before I left for the poker room this morning, I happened to read a passage in HEPFAP about, when in loose passive games with loads of fish, you can try and NOT raise your good but not great hands and allow the fishies to limp in. While you cost yourself BB preflop by not raising, you gain it back when you flop a big hand and they chase you down with whatever.

So its limped to me in MP1 with A [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] J [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]. Normally I auto-raise this but I decided to limp. Additionally, I was pretty much feared by almost everyone at the table and a lot of my raises were making everyone go away. So 7 people to the flop:

Q [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] T [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] 6 [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]

Monster flop for me. SB bets right out, two calls, and I call. My thinking here is to get all these players behind me to call as well and build a huge pot. While my hand is far from invulnerable, I am not too fearful of anything right now. I believe one person mucked, so 6 to the turn:

7 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]

SB leads again. Couple of callers to me, and I call again. At the time, my line was that I was going to raise the river (hoping the river was a blank), which would completely confuse the fishies and they would call with whatever they had because they were lost. I believe we lost one more, so 5 to the river:

7 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]

And my dreams are shattered as the board pairs. However, a player who had folded immediately threw his arms up in disgust at the sight of the river. This made me pretty certain nobody had a FH since he obviously folded one. Of course, this shut down all the action. I bet, got two callers, and showed my winner.

A couple of the really big fishies at the other end of the table talk about how they would have been raising their asses off with that hand. Of course they have exactly zero respect from the rest of the table, so they can raise and raise and raise because of their image of being reckless idiots.

I realize my play was not standard and I likely cost myself anywhere from 4-7 BB's by not raising. My question is: is there any validity to this plan of action? Again, I decided to take this route because of my table image (tight-aggressive winner) and building a monster pot by keeping all these knuckleheads in as long as possible.