Reading Your Opponent

There are two ways of reading your opponent. One is by picking up tells. It is hard to describe what tells are, since there are so many and they are so varied. Generally, they are some characteristic physical behavior that is highly correlated with a type of hand. There is a variety of behaviors that may tell something about your opponent’s hand. There are so many types of tells that it is impossible to focus on all the things that all of your opponents are doing that could reveal something about their hands. Tells may relate to hand movements, including chip handling, voice depth and tone, posture, eye movements, and many other things. Normally, the best that a tell can do is enable you to put your opponent’s hand into a range — bluff, weak, medium, strong, and monster.

The other way of reading your opponents is by learning their patterns. If they have a pattern and you figure it out, you will know something about their hands. Sometimes a pattern may be something simple, like the fact that a player is tight but aggressive. The best reads often occur when you are able to combine a physical tell with a pattern. The following hand occurred in a recent small-stakes cash game. I was killing time before meeting some friends at the movie theater in the casino. I was one of three tight-aggressive players in a cash game with a bunch of tourists. All three of us had accumulated a lot of chips in the hour or so that I had been there. Even though the blinds were only $1-$2, players were making it $10 to $15 on their first raise.

Tight player one (TP1) raised to $12 from under the gun. Even in this wild game, everyone seemed to have realized that he must have a good hand to raise from under the gun. Tight player two (TP2) had already needled TP1 about being so tight. (Rule: It is usually the tightest player at the table who accuses other players of being too tight.) Everyone folded around to TP2 in the big blind, and he called. His hand turned out to be a pair of tens. While he might have considered reraising a loose player, it was clear that a call was best here. The raiser almost certainly had a high pair or a very good ace, like A-K or A-Q. The flop was J-10-4 rainbow. TP2 checked his set. Leading out might trap a high pair into raising and create a huge pot, but trying a check-raise is an acceptable play. Surprisingly, TP1 also checked. It seemed normal for him to make a continuation-bet. I thought there were three possible explanations. The least likely one was that he had decided to bluff-raise with garbage, and now was giving up. Even if he had decided to make the initial bluff-raise, I would expect him to fire at least one more bullet. The second explanation was that he had flopped a monster, and wanted to feign weakness. In this case, the monster had to be a set of jacks. The third possibility was that he had a hand like A-K or A-Q, and wanted to take a free card to make the nuts. I would usually semibluff with those hands, hoping to win right away, but would be content with my gutshot and overcard draws if called. I don’t think TP2 considered these possibilities. He was just annoyed that his attempted check-raise hadn’t worked.

The turn was a queen of the fourth suit, so no two-flush was on the board. TP1 sat up a little straighter and released a slight sigh — two physical signs of a strong hand. TP2 did not notice this, and fired out a pot-sized bet. TP1 raised, TP2 reraised, and both of them soon had all of their chips in the pot. The river was a deuce. TP2 proudly displayed his set of tens and stared in shocked disbelief at TP1’s A-K, which had turned into a straight with the arrival of the queen. He then started to moan about morons hitting gutshots, and his bad luck. I sat there thinking that some elementary card reading would have enabled him to escape cheaply.

The check on the flop probably indicated A-K taking a free card, hoping to catch a queen, or a set of jacks. When the queen came, there was only one hand the set of tens could beat, A-Q. This was unlikely to cause the physical behavior that was exhibited. It also was unlikely that TP1 would happily fire off all of his chips on a dangerous board with just one pair. TP2 should have check-called the turn, hoping that he would fill up. Even if the board paired on the river, he had to be aware that his opponent might have jacks (or even the unlikely queens) full. I don’t know if he could or should actually lay down his set on the river, but check-calling again would have saved him more than half of his stack.

Remember to try to put together your picture of an opponent’s hand based on both physical tells and patterns, whenever possible. When your opponent makes an unusual play, like the raiser’s check on the flop, he probably has a reason for doing so. Better players will have very logical reasons, although sometimes they are doing something unusual just to be tricky or hard to read. When you are in situations in which your whole stack may be committed to the pot, take some extra time to review exactly what has happened, and figure out what it means.

Steve “Zee” Zolotow, aka The Bald Eagle, is a successful games player. He currently devotes most of his time to poker. He can be found at many major tournaments and playing on Full Tilt, as one of its pros. When escaping from poker, he hangs out in his bars on Avenue A — Nice Guy Eddie’s at Houston and Doc Holliday’s at 9th Street — in New York City.