If you're playing poker, chances are you're doing it to win money. And one surefire way to win the most money is to play against bad players: what rounders like to call fish.

Unfortunately, due to overfishing and Bill Frist, the fish are less plentiful these days and you may be lucky to find yourself at a table with one fish.

The best way to maximize equity in these games is to isolate the fish as much as possible. Get him away from the other sharks and maximize the amount of time the two of you play pots heads-up.

It should be pretty obvious why you want to play pots heads-up against a fish. If you're the better player, the more you play heads-up against a bad player, the more you will make in the long run.

Your edge comes from outplaying your opponents. Meaning you will win more money if you play most of your pots against one bad opponent than if you play pots versus one bad opponent and one (or more) good opponents.

Where to Sit

If there is a seat at the table open to the fish's left when you first sit down, you should definitely take advantage of it. Sitting with position on a fish will make isolating him a simple task.

Every time he limps, you raise with the hope of folding out the rest of your opponents luminous contact lenses. Because fish love to call, this will often leave the two of you heads-up.

When you're in position against a fish you do not need premium hands to isolation-raise. Instead, your entire range of playable hands should be brought in for a raise.

Now granted, you're not going to always find a seat to the fish's left, but you can still isolate from out of position. If the fish is cold-calling a lot, you can still raise and hope he is the only one to call.

Also, you can take advantage of other players trying to isolate him. Let's say the fish limps from under the gun and the button raises. The button (if he is good) is going to be raising very light in position against the fish.

If you're in the big blind you can take advantage of this by three-betting a wider range of hands, ones like A-Js, K-Qs, TT, etc. If the poker gods are smiling on you, the fish will call your three-bet with his whole range of crappy hands and the button will get out of the way, leaving you heads-up.

Isolation-Raising: Right Even with Weak Hands

Under normal circumstances you play tight, because good players will not pay you off with bad hands. That means the quality of your hand needs to be that much better to extract value from their hands of similar quality.

When you play a fish, he's liable to be playing everything, which includes bad hands. Also, he rarely knows where he stands after the flop and will often pay you off much more readily than a good player.

Since you are the better player (thanks to your extensive reading of PL.com strategy articles), you will impose your will on these loose-passive fish. You'll be putting money in when you are ahead and folding when you're behind.

The fish, however, will always just be putting money in, with little rhyme or reason.

Your strategy will derive you the most value after the flop. Fish take weak hands too far, infrared contact lenses and they pay off too lightly with any piece of the board.

When the pot grows on the turn and river, you have the ability to decide whether your hand warrants big bets or if it's time to slow down.

This is why you want to get into pots with fish: they do not make the same distinctions. They only think about their hand. If they think it needs to see a showdown, they will pay whatever it takes.

Since you are heads-up you only have to worry about the fish, and not about other good players in the hand who could be lurking in the weeds with big hands.

Try to avoid getting into hands with fish multihanded as much as possible. Look for situations where you can play heads-up against them, whether by raising, cold-calling or three-betting.

Remember: you are the better player, so impose your will on them.

It's in their nature to make mistakes. As we all know, when your opponent makes mistakes, you profit. So start profiting- isolate that fish.

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There’s no simple fix for becoming a winning poker player but there are a handful of simple, easy-to-execute poker moves that can make a world of difference to your bottom line.

By fine-tuning these tactics you’ll have more tools to put to work at the poker table. You’ll be able to better understand your opponents and how to manipulate them, and that will translate directly to money in your pocket.

We already wrote the book on the 10 Essential Texas hold'em Moves and now we’re back to bring you 10 more.

Today we’re talking about floating the flop, a move that can turn your opponent's continuation bets against him. By just calling your opponent’s bet on the flop, you’ll be in a perfect spot to take the pot away when he shows weakness on the turn.

The float is an intermediate poker move that requires a strong understanding of the players you’re up against but if you can master it you’ll be able to win more pots post-flop, regardless of the cards you’re holding.

The What: At its most basic, marked cards floating the flop refers to calling a bet on the flop with the intention of betting and taking down the pot when your opponent checks to you on the turn.

The Why: Floating the flop is a move used to defend against the continuation bet. Because players routinely continuation bet with a wide range of hands, you shouldn’t be surrendering every time someone does it. But instead of simply raising the flop, floating allows you to pick up more information on the turn before making your move.

The Who: You should only be floating the flop against tight-aggressive players who do a lot of preflop raising and continuation betting.

The When: You should only be floating the flop when you are in position.

The Where: Floating the flop is a powerful poker move that can be used in all forms of Texas Hold’em but because it requires two streets of action it lends itself more to deep-stacked games.

Floating the Flop the Right Way

Floating the flop is a bluffing technique so it’s important to understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it to avoid burning money.

To make it crystal clear, you are only technically floating when you believe your cards are worse than your opponent’s. If you believe you have the best hand then you would be calling the flop and betting the turn for value.

And because you’re bluffing, the conditions have to be just right to give yourself the biggest chance of success.

Here are the three most important factors to consider when you’re thinking about floating the flop and betting the turn.

• Only float when you’re in position.
• Only float when you’re in a heads-up pot.
• Only float against tight-aggressive players who continuation bet frequently and are able to make laydowns when shown strength.

It’s important to be in position when you float the flop because you need that extra piece of information your opponent will give you on the turn.

Because your opponent will be continuation betting with good hands as well as bad hands, when he checks to you on the turn you’ll have one more clue that he’s got air. If he does bet the turn instead of checking, you need to reevaluate your plan.

It’s also only advisable to float the flop and bet the turn when you’re in a heads-up pot. More players mean more variables and a worse chance of succeeding with a bluff.

Floating is about telling your opponent a story, one that involves you calling the flop because you have a legitimate hand. In a multi-way pot your call on the flop doesn’t mean as much and your story will be less believable when you bet the turn.

Advanced Strategy Tip

If your opponent throws a wrench into your plans by betting the turn, all may not be lost. Many aggressive players won’t give up and check/fold fourth street. They’ll fire a second barrel as a bluff to try to blow you off your hand.

If you think you’re up against a tough, very aggressive player, you should consider raising the turn. Calling the flop and raising the turn is an extremely strong line and will usually force a good player to quickly lay down marginal hands.

This is an advanced move and should only be made with a very strong understanding of your opponent and his or her behavior.

Only Float Against Tight-Aggressive Players

Making sure you have position and only one opponent are important factors, but you must also consider the type of player against whom you are going to float.

Floating does not work against a player that only raises preflop  infrared marked cards and continuation bets with premium hands, for obvious reasons.

Floating also does not work against a loose/passive calling station who will frequently call your turn bet with marginal hands.

Look for tight-aggressive players who raise a lot in position preflop and follow it up with a continuation bet a high percentage of the time. These players will be showing up with air a lot, and check-folding to you when you bet the turn.

It’s much more difficult to float successfully against tough, hyper-aggressive players, however. Try to find players who fire one continuation bet but tend to shut down on the turn when they don’t have a hand.

Floating the Flop in Action

If you’re still not convinced about the efficacy of floating the flop and betting the turn, let Phil Ivey show you how it’s done like only Phil Ivey can.

In this video Ivey breaks one of our golden rules by floating in a mutli-way pot, and he does it not once but twice.

Ivey calls two big bets with seven-high and manages to take the pot away when Patrik Antonius checks on the river. This hand doesn’t even come close to following the easy-to-execute formula we presented above so consider it something to which you can aspire.

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This is the first of two articles to point out a few of the ways players can cheat at live poker. The first step to not getting scammed is to know what the scams are.

Ever heard the expression "All is fair in love and war"? This used to characterize people's view of poker, and I appreciate and sympathize with this notion of the game.

Golfers grease up the face of their clubs, batters cork their bats, hockey players hook their blades, point guards purposely foul opponents and poker cheats keep an ace up their sleeve.

That doesn't mean, though, that you have to offer yourself up to the mercy of unethical players when you sit down at the felt.

First we have to decide what qualifies as card cheating. Simply put, cheating is doing anything against the rules to gain you an unfair advantage. Any game with stakes on the line will have cheating and cheaters.

In all sports or games, a player has to evaluate the risk versus the reward of cheating. In that context, any player may cheat within their particular comfort zone.

In what follows, we'll look at various forms of live cheating from the confirmed grifter's perspective. Once you've seen the lay of the land this way, in part two we'll get on to practical tips and techniques for insulating yourself from the wide array of chip-stealing schemes.

Cold-Decking

The most common cheat you'll see in poker movies is a cold deck. This is a cheat still used to this day in cardrooms across the world.

A cold deck simply refers to switching the deck in play with a new deck, unbeknownst to the other players. The new deck will have a setup hand ready to deal a bad beat to an unfortunate mark.

This maneuver is called a cold deck for a very simple reason. While handling, shuffling and dealing a deck of cards, it will heat up from being held in your hand. The setup deck switched in will be cold to the touch.

If you have a self-dealt game being played, where the deck is being passed around the table, a good card mechanic can switch out a deck and substitute a stacked cold deck without ever being noticed. Remember the "What's that over there?!" trick you'd play as a kid to steal your friend's french fries?

In a cardroom with a professional dealer, the only way to execute this maneuver is to have the house in on it.

You need the dealer to make the switch, or in one club I know of, the house sets up the deck and puts it into play during a routine setup change. (A setup change is when a cardroom changes the decks being used. It happens every eight hours or so, or in some cases as requested by a player.)

There really is no way to protect yourself from such a scam, other than to know your fellow players, know the venue you're playing in and keep an eye out for suspicious activity.

Holdouts (Ace up the Sleeve)

A holdout is executed by taking cards out of the deck and holding on to them. The idea in this scam is to switch a card in your hand with a holdout card to make a winning hand.

The low-value card you switch your holdout for is known as "dead wood." It's kind of a pun, as the town of Deadwood is historically notorious for poker cheats.

In order to play a holdout, a player first needs to remove the valued card from play. It's simply accomplished by stashing one card and folding your other into the muck. If you're playing a variation with more than two cards per player, it becomes even easier to hold on to what you like.

The average person won't notice that a deck is light until eight or more cards have gone missing from it. That's right: you can remove seven cards from a deck before most people will notice anything. Only a very skilled dealer can feel the difference between a full deck and a deck that's light by a card or two.

Cheats (or card mechanics) can have up to seven cards of dead wood on their person at anytime. Where they hide them depends on their individual preference, and the surroundings they play in.

The most common hiding place is between their leg and their chair. Lots of cheats avoid putting cards up their sleeve as they can be easily spotted, or accidently dropped at an inopportune time.

Some mechanics will put putty under the table and stick the cards to it. The drawback to this technique is the greasy mark left on the face of the card.

After the cheat plays the held-out card, they need to ditch their dead wood. It would look funny if a player folded five cards in a game of Hold'em, so they need to find inconspicuous ways to get the job done.

One way to do it is while the dealer is washing the cards on the table. Any stray cards coming near the cheat he will politely push back to the dealer, along with a handful of deadwood.

Holdout Machines

There are holdout machines available dating all the way back to the 1800s. It's rare that any high-end cheat would use such a device, as they're unreliable, easily found out and hard to explain when found on your person.

These machines range from devices involving materials as simple as elastic bands and paper clips to full-body contraptions incorporating pulleys and levers.

There are even holdout tables available on the market, allowing you to use your poker table to hold onto a card or a few. Some of these tables include a carousel feature, allowing you to transfer the cards to other players.

Marking Cards

This is the most commonly used cheat in poker. It's being used to some extent in every poker room I've ever been to. There are many ways to mark cards, become marked cards , and if you play live poker chances are you've come across of a few of them already.

Painting the Papers

Some cheats will paint the backs of the cards with an ink that can only been seen with the use of a special tinted lens. As far as I know the lenses are always red in color, making red-lensed sunglasses a poor choice if you don't want to be found out.

The cheats using this technique are most commonly found wearing a tinted contact lens. At the correct angle, you may see a red halo around one or both of the cheater's irises. The cheater can paint whatever they like on the back of the cards, everything from full letters with suits to small dots on specific cards.

Professionally Marked Decks

You can buy professionally marked decks in most magic stores. I had one as a kid. My deck had the back of the cards covered in small circles. The top left corners had a collection of 13 circles, with a small line over one of them to denote value.

Direction of the line accounted for suits. Other marks use the idea of a clock, with the hour position for cards, no mark for an ace and so on.

These kinds of decks are rarely used. A rigged deck that can be found out so simply is too much of a risk to put into play.

Nicks, Dents and Scratches

The best way to mark cards is to do so in a way that looks natural. You can't get caught if your marks can plausibly be attributed to natural wear and tear.

Cheats most commonly mark cards by using a chip or a fingernail to make a dent in the corner of a card. Because it's not possible to distinguish between the marks, this technique is only used to mark the four aces (and sometimes kings).

Professional cheats have been known to make nicks with their nail on the edge of the card. These are hard to see, but easy to feel as you deal. A well-trained cheat can feel the location of their marks as they deal, to keep track of what they deal to which players.

To keep marked cards out of play, you want to pay attention to your cards. Look for identifiable marks; watch for any suspicious activity. And finally, take the deck "to the movies."

Taking the deck to the movies means rifling through the deck and watching for any cards that move or "jump," just like those little flip-book animations we all made in grade school.

But Wait - There's More!

The second half this article will explore a couple more ways players cheat in live poker games, and will include a list of suggestions on how to help reduce your chances of being cheated.

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