It's All About Reading

Numerous poker players have read the books and understand poker’s basic strategies. But, what is most important and difficult to teach in a book is reading opponents’ hands. Good hand readers make better laydowns, value-bet better, and design highly profitable plays based on their reads. Great hand readers combine their hand-reading ability with their strategy knowledge and make better decisions in their play of hands. I know many players who are extremely knowledgeable strategically in poker, yet are not big winners in the game because of their inability to read hands.

In order to read your opponents’ hands well, you need to get inside their heads, read their knowledge level to decipher their thoughts, know their psychological makeup to judge their emotional reactions, and pay attention to their physical mannerisms to pick up tells. If you have an accurate tell on an opponent, you will own him! Do these things well and you will be able to narrow your opponents’ range of hands down further than they will be capable of doing. That narrower range should enable you to make better poker decisions than they will make against you.

I was playing in a $30-$60 limit hold’em game at Bellagio; one early-position player limped in, and Jim, a local regular who plays a solid style of poker, limped in from middle position behind him. In the cutoff, I looked down to see my much loved starting hand, the A A, and fired a raise forward. The button folded, and the small blind and big blind both called, as did the early-position limper and Jim. We took the flop five-handed, and it came Q 9 5.

The field checked to me, and I tossed in $30. The small blind check-raised, folding the big blind and the opening limper. Jim called the two bets cold. My read was that Jim likely held top pair or a flush or straight draw, or possibly was slow-playing a big hand. Being solid, he would not call a check-raise with a preflop aggressor yet to act behind him with anything worse than top pair or a valid draw. I decided to flat-call the raise as a trap play, with the intent of raising the small blind’s bet on the turn if I still liked the situation. By flat-calling, I could get a read on my opponents on the turn, and possibly save a bet(s) or gain bets if I had the opportunity to raise.

The 9 came on the turn, putting second pair on the board, and they both checked to me, nullifying my trap. When you set traps, you always run the risk that your opponent(s) will not behave in the manner that you predicted. You lose your option if a scare card comes that causes your opponent to check, or if he checks as a matter of strategy. The greater the likelihood of your opponent checking, the more you should tend to play your hand straightforwardly. The fact that this board was suited and had straight draws increased the likelihood of the hand being checked to me. In hindsight, I think trapping in this particular situation was a mistake.

That said, you have to play the hand the best that you can from where you stand. How much you screwed up in getting there is no longer an issue. I fired a bet forward, intent on getting the best value that I could from here on out; the small blind called, and much to my surprise, Jim raised!

What might Jim have? I thought about how he had played his hand. He called preflop and then called a raise. He called a raise cold on the flop, and then on the turn, he check-raised a situation in which he should not have read me for having a great propensity to bet. I thought about how Jim would think. He’s solid, but I would not rate him as playing at a professional level. That said, he has read the books and knows the plays. Jim is nobody’s fool at the table, and his thoughts always make logical sense.

Reading the hand in reverse, he had slow-played the turn, meaning he also had slow-played the flop, indicating that he had a huge hand. I ruled out Q-Q and 9-9, as he would have raised preflop with those hands. Q-9 suited was a hand that I didn’t think he would play or would slow-play the flop with. He wouldn’t call the flop with a 9 or slow-play a naked queen on the turn. But what about 5-5? That made perfect sense. He would call preflop with that holding, slow-play the flop and be unafraid of giving a free card on the turn, and slow-play then, also. I thought about whether any other holdings made sense, and none did. This particular situation was not one in which Jim would bluff. I had him dead to rights on a set of fives. Needing an ace, and with the pot not laying me the right price, I tossed my aces into the muck.

I was feeling very full of myself about making the read and the laydown, until the dealer turned the A on the river, giving me aces full if I had stayed in the hand. Jim bet the river, was called by the small blind, and showed down the 5 5. He looked like he was having a good time stacking the chips — my chips!

Yes, I would have won the hand, but I understand that the quality of a decision is what a player must hold to the highest degree, and the decision was right. I read the hand correctly and pulled the trigger on my decision based on that read. It’s rare that you can narrow your opponents’ hand ranges down to a single hand. Mostly, you put them on a range of hands and analyze the likelihood of them holding one hand over another, and blend that with how your hand fares against each hand in that range to approach the correct decision. Do that effectively while possessing good strategy knowledge, and you’re on your way to world-class play.

Longtime poker pro and author Roy Cooke’s Card Player column has appeared since 1992. A successful Las Vegas real estate broker since 1990, his website is www.roycooke.com. Should you wish to inquire regarding real-estate matters — including purchase, sale, or mortgage — his phone number is (702) 396-6575. Roy’s longtime collaborator John Bond’s website is www.johnbondwriting.com.