Trusting My Reads

Ask any professional poker player what he thinks is his most valuable skill, and he probably will say: "The quality of my reads." I agree -- as this is what separates the merely decent players from the good and very good players.

However, even more important than making good reads is the courage to act upon them. During the EPT Grand Final in Monaco, two hands came up within a short time frame in which trusting my reads was the key.

In the first hand, I was up against my fellow countryman Lex Veldhuis, a very good online player known as "RaSZi." I know him quite well, and especially in live play, I am often able to get a very accurate read on him. Anytime I know a player very well and have some reliable tells on him, I am willing to go an awful long way just trusting my reads.

Under the gun, in the last hand before the dinner break on day one, I had made it 475 to go with the A Q. The blinds were 75-150 and I was down to 10,000 from my initial 15,000 stack. On the button, Lex quickly called, in a manner that suggested: "Well, even if I don't flop anything, but I don't think you received help, I'm going to try to bet you off your hand by using my good position." The flop came 7 3 2, bringing me no help whatsoever; yet, it also might have missed my opponent. I decided to check, basically representing the hand that I had -- two unimproved big cards. Lex quickly bet three-fourths of the pot, and I called. The turn was the 4, a card that I definitely did not want to see, as possible hands that Lex could hold, such as 5-4, 6-5, or A-5, now had improved; in addition, that card didn't help me against the many possible hands that he could have that already had me beat. I checked, and Lex quickly bet 2,000. I started yapping about whether or not he had noticed this dangerous 4 on the turn. The combination of his bet and rather tense demeanor made me believe that there was still a good chance that I had the best hand with my A-Q. So, I called, and after a river 7 and no less than five minutes of thought on my part, I check-called his 4,500 river bet. I was under tremendous pressure when making that call (there was a huge crowd around the table, because it was the only hand still in play, including lots of press and TV cameras; plus, inasmuch as Lex and I have some kind of history against each other, there was also a lot of ego pressure involved -- at least for me), and made the right decision. Just as I had thought from the get-go, my opponent had been flat-out bluffing all the way with the K 10 -- and my ace high netted me a huge pot.



So, I had the courage to act upon my read, even when holding a hand as weak as an unimproved ace high on the river, and it got me back to having an average stack again at the expense of a dangerous player.

Just three hours later, I again would have a spot-on read. This time, however, I didn't have the courage to act upon it -- and I was eliminated as a result. We were at the 150-300 level, when a good and aggressive American player raised from under the gun to 800 -- which was something he had done a few times already. On two of those occasions, I considered reraising him, but folded. Being in a similar situation now with K-K, I mimicked my movements from before, again threatening to reraise. When I got a reliable tell that this opponent would get involved if I bumped it up, I chose to add more chips to my reraise -- more than anything to represent fear, and perhaps induce him to come over the top with a hand like A-Q, A-K, or a medium pocket pair. I reraised, making it 2,525 to go, looking intently at no one else but him, hoping he would move in on me. And, indeed, when the action got back to him, he did come over the top of me -- but not all in or huge; he made a small reraise to 6,000 flat. This type of over-the-top reraise, when out of position against a reraiser, is usually an almost 100 percent accurate giveaway of a player having two aces. And, indeed, the more I looked at him, and the more I analyzed his bet, the stronger my read became that despite evidence to the contrary (his aggressiveness, our history, his read on me that I didn't need to be loaded for bear here), he could have just one hand: A-A.

But, being below average with my 14,000 stack and having almost 20 percent of it in the middle already (and given the fact that even if I was up against aces, I could still outdraw), I went against my read and repopped it all in -- only to face the dreaded aces after all. When I was unable to improve and was eliminated, many players commented: "Well, if you run into aces with kings, what can you do? That's just bad luck." But I disagree. Despite my very powerful starting hand, I should have had the courage to trust my read and lay down my kings. Then, I still would have had more than 11,000 left, with an average stack being 23,000 and blinds of just 150-300. For a short-stack specialist like me, it shouldn't have been all that hard to slowly fight my way back into the tournament -- particularly because this was a four-day event with a very slow structure.

And for that reason, I think not acting upon my read was simply an awful mistake. And even though this is the type of mistake that I rarely make, given that this was such a prestigious event (a total prize pool of more than $10 million), it was a very costly one.

Rolf has been a professional cash-game player since 1998. He is the author of the successful Secrets of Professional Pot-Limit Omaha, and the co-author of Hold'em on the Come. He is the creator and presenter of the hold'em four-DVD set Rolf Slotboom's Winning Plays. He is the first-ever Dutch Champion, and maintains his own site at
www.rolfslotboom.com.