Quick Win Rate Gains: How to Read Hands, Part II

Successful hand reading is the combination of several skills. In part I, you learned to narrow down your opponent’s possible holdings by using deductive processes, starting with preflop play and examining your own image at the table. Now, you will dive into a more nuanced and clever part II to get quick and smart wins that help you to analyze other player’s game plans. Bet sizing, betting patterns, and exploitability are the keys to these quick wins. These three additions to your hand reading arsenal make you into a hand reading monster, especially facing less experienced competition.

Bet Sizing

Small deviations in bet sizing are telling of an opponent’s hand strength. New poker players love to romanticize the physical information communicated at the table, like a player leaning back or shrugging before placing a bet; but, the fact is that bet sizing is often even more informative in several easy to spot cases. That makes considering your opponent’s bet sizing a quick win for you, if you know what telegraphs strength and weakness.

• Draws hit — Do players bet a size like half-pot when draws hit whenever they don’t have the draw, but bet more whenever they do have the draw or they are bluffing? If that’s the case, most of these types of players are extremely easy to combat: fold bluff catchers (hands that only beat bluffs) facing the half-pot sized bet or raise largely with your entire range. If your opponent always has a weak hand when he bets small, then he should have a difficult time calling your large raise, even if you have to use one of your bluff catchers to make the raise. Remember, we determined that the bluff catchers are worthless anyway!

• Polarized ranges — Most players fail to recognize how difficult it is to make a strong hand and end up bluffing far too often in proportion to the times they’ll actually have the goods they’re representing. Against these players, who may be betting a larger portion of the pot size, don’t be afraid to call with a marginal hand. On a board like K 7 3 9 J and when facing a large bet, a hand like K 9 can be nearly the exact same as one like Q 10, the second nuts, against the right type of opponent. If a player bets a size he would not bet with medium strength hands, then all bluff catchers have very close to the same value and you just need to decide if your opponent bluffs enough of the time to call. Don’t get wrapped up in the absolute strength of a hand, for example, a flush beats two pair, when the relative strength of both hands is basically the same. If your opponent only value bets hands with the ace of diamonds in them and bluffs without a pair, two pair will work just fine to snap off those extra bluffs.

• Under bets — Does your opponent ever bluff when he bets very small relative to the pot size? If not, then fold all your bluff catchers. Be aware though! Smart opponents may use this thought process to create a cheap bluffing opportunity. Try not to assume you know a player’s tendencies until you have reasonably high confidence in your reads. Even if your opponent bets $1 into a $1,000 pot, if he’s not bluffing for that amount, your bluff catching hand (like an ace-high or bottom pair) is a losing hand. There are cases when the value of calling strictly for information can make the losing call worthwhile, but it’s extremely rare and for an extremely small bet in proportion to the pot size. Don’t use curiosity as an excuse to put money into the pot behind.

Betting Patterns

Similar to bet sizing, betting patterns tell a lot about a player’s thought processes. Pick up on these common situations and how your opponents play in them, and you can extrapolate from them to exploit your opponent’s play in similar spots in the future. It might be as easy as determining if they’re too passive or too aggressive of a player in general.

• Scare cards — Particularly after the preflop raiser continuation bets (c-bets), gets called on the flop by one or more players, and the turn is an overcard to the board, how does the preflop raiser react? If the board is similar to 9 4 2 K, then does the preflop raiser only bet the turn with a piece of the board as a bluff, hands like Q J or A 5, or will he show up with anything, a hand like 8 7 that completely misses? If the player bets nearly anything, then you can call him down lightly. Few players bet a nice mix of bluffs and value hands in these spots. They either go for the bluff with most of their hands, or just bet hands like pocket tens or better, without enough bluffs. Either way, your choice is easy if you pay attention to the particular player’s tendencies for the spot.

• Never, once or twice — In the same spot, the king-high board on the turn, does your opponent bluff two streets (turn and river) always, or just the turn? Great players will mix it up and give up some of the time after bluffing a scare card turn, like in the king-high board example just covered, but still bluff the river the rest of the time, so solving the spot isn’t so cut and dry. Since you are looking for quick wins against less experienced players, you know it’s helpful information that weaker players tend to play the spot in a bit more of a binary fashion: they rarely bluff or always bluff twice. If you can figure out if your opponent has a passive or aggressive nature, then you can easily and accurately extrapolate and decide if the same player is rarely bluffing or always bluffing when the turn is a scare card. He’ll think you’re reading his mind, but in reality, it’s a simple categorization of his less experienced player type!

• Multiway betting – Does a player c-bet with close to the same frequency on particular boards, no matter how many players are in the pot? If so, then you are going to have a lot of opportunities to take advantage of his play by bluffing more often. With more players seeing a given flop, the average hand strength on the flop goes up. It makes sense, right? So if all the other players show signs of folding after this habitually c-betting player bets, then you might have a very clear and very profitable bluff raise or float (a call designed to represent strength on a later street). Consider even crazy-seeming bluffs like calling the flop and jamming over a turn bet. If your opponent always bets the flop and nearly always has a one-pair hand at best, then you might win the pot as high as 90 percent of the time with this seemingly crazy bluff. That’s a pretty solid win, and with any two cards. Don’t over-do it and abuse the play. Consider when insanely aggressive plays work and abuse particular opponents accordingly. Blindly raising without the proper information on an opponent is a great way to punt off your stack quickly and go broke.

Exploitability

Poker games that have shared boards inherently create extremely scary spots for one player or another. We covered scare cards for the defensive player, but what if the defensive player hits the board harder than the original aggressor? What if the preflop aggressor opts to check back? If you can narrow down a player’s potential holdings well enough, then you can likely find tons of spots to bet any hand profitably. Small wins that you can take advantage of extremely frequently become significant very quickly, so check out these spots weaker players are commonly exploited.

• Defending (enough) after checking back — When the preflop raiser checks back, there are often times, particularly on scary turn cards, when the checking back player just won’t have a hand. In those times, you can often bet any two cards profitably and induce folds from hands as strong as bottom pair or ace-high. For example, our opponent raises preflop and you call out of position. The flop goes check/check, and on a board that reads 9 4 2 Q you might be able to bet any two cards profitably. If your opponent has a hand like A 2, then he’s basically hoping that you have a hand as weak as K 10. Even still, against that type of semibluff, he has to dodge a 10, jack, or king on the river; additionally, he’ll very likely make a mistake by folding too often on a river heart or eight, if and when you elect to bluff again. It’s not looking great for him, so make him pay!

• Fold — A lot of the time, the best way to exploit a player is by folding. A lot of players just don’t have bluffs in particular spots because of the board run out or their passive nature. A fun example we already touched on is when passive players bet on a scare card turn. If you check and call top pair on a 9 4 2 flop, and check and face a bet on a K turn, then without a diamond in your hand, you’re almost certainly in trouble against a passive player. You just learned how to abuse scary boards, but if you know the player you face is scared to bluff, then the best you can do a lot of the time on the other end of the betting, on the defensive end, is to fold.

• Bluffing bluffers — Now let’s take all concepts a step further. There are loads of times that solid players are just going to bet their entire distribution of holdings if they believe that they have discovered a weakness in your game. We just covered a lot of them. By nature, it is likely going to feel uncomfortable for you to do this trick, but try raising your entire distribution after you have shown weakness. Whenever you feel uncomfortable and facing a bet from a good player, try to think about it as a spot that you might be exploitable. Use that against your opponent, and realize that you can occasionally rebluff the likely bluffing player. If your opponent is good, then make sure you’re representing a hand other than a turned set or unlikely two pair; otherwise, you might be re-re-bluffed or picked off lightly!

We now have three quick and valuable wins under our belt: reading bet sizing, considering betting patterns, and determining exploitability of our opponents and of ourselves. Remember, all these tricks should be applied in the proper context and can be used against you as well. So try to make sure your game is ready to handle players who might use these tricks against you, and if you’re telegraphing the value of your hand in any way, eliminate the value of that information from your default strategy so that you become the player at the table you don’t want to face. ♠

Reid Young is a successful cash game player and poker coach. He is the founder of TransformPoker.com.