Learning to Read… Hands that is!

Years ago, I took up stud, never having played the game before. To learn, I sat next to a couple of experienced stud-playing friends several times and discussed the game’s ins and outs. I then proceeded to play in tough $75-150 stud games and I beat them pretty good. My limit hold’em skills easily transferred over to stud, albeit with a few minor adjustments.

I assumed my transition to no-limit hold’em would be the same. I’d discuss the changeover with some excellent no-limit players, and, with my strong conceptual poker knowledge and skill sets from limit, I thought I’d move quickly through the learning process.

It’s been much tougher than I expected. I overestimated my abilities and underestimated no-limit’s complexities. It’s an extremely complicated game, and very different from limit. My ability to read hands, a skill I easily transferred from limit-hold’em to stud, doesn’t transfer well to no-limit. And I’m inexperienced with the whole issue of bet-sizing. When I review my play, I’m making numerous errors in both areas.

And those areas are interrelated. How you read your opponents’ hands and tendencies will determine your bet-sizing. So, until I learn how to read hands accurately, I’ll be floundering around in SmallWinnersville.

Hand-reading is both an art and a science. To make it as simple as possible, I define a mental flow chart system from which to operate. With each opponent’s move, I put them on a range of hands. As the hand progresses, I acquire more information based on each opponent’s play and narrow that range with each new piece of information.

A player will have a range of hands to open, raise, etc., dependent upon the situation. Of that range, your opponent(s) will play hands differently, once again, depending upon the situation. You need to define what range of hands your opponent(s) play choices signify and match them up with any previous ranges you have read them for. That will calculate a new range, at which point you keep repeating the process, further defining your opponents’ ranges.

For example, some players will auto-continuation bet 100 percent of their preflop raising range, others will bet 100 percent of their range on draw-light boards and bet only their strong hands on the draw-heavy boards. With the latter texture of player, you can further define their preflop range by noting which portions of their range they would play in the manner they’re currently executing. Differing play choices depends on the player. Everyone plays differently, and unfortunately, nobody provides instructions. So, you need to pay attention to your opponents and think about why they do what they do. Get into their heads and read their emotions and thinking patterns.

In other words, put opponents on a range of hands and remove portions of that range as the hand progresses. Which hands in his range would he play the manner he did and which hands can you eliminate from his range because of his play choices? Incorporate psychology into the equation. Is your opponent tilted? Overconfident? Defeated and depressed? Paranoid? And how does that effect his play?

Sometimes you can narrow your opponent’s hand down to one hand, but usually you’ll just narrow the range. Keep in mind, your read must make sense both forward and backwards. If your opponent wouldn’t make a given play with a hand preflop you can’t add it into his range later.

For ease of mental processing, I compartmentalize my opponents’ hands into “directories.”

Wide/Narrow Range: Does their hand range consist of many or few hands?
Strong Range: One with many strong hands and few weak ones.
Weak Range: One with many weak hands and few strong ones.
Polarized Range: One that’s either a bluff or a very strong hand, an either/or proposition.
Depolarized Range: One that’s blended with the potential for many variations.
Inelastic Range: One that will call any reasonable bet without size variation.
Elastic Range: One that will call depending on the size of the amount bet.
Weighted Towards: A hand that leans toward a given play. i.e., bluffs, sets, etc.
By thinking in this manner, I make my thought process simpler, which makes my decisions better. As I progress, I’ll take more complicated lines, but this is my starting reading hands methodology.

The object is to make the best play against your opponents’ range. Often, you’ll find your opponent is at the “top” or “bottom” portion of his range and the play you made wasn’t the correct one for his actual holding. Don’t despair! The correct play you made against his range is the right one; you were just unlucky to have run into an unorthodox scenario.

Also, keep track of your opponent’s tendencies. Is he a loose player with a wide range of hands? Or is he tight, and his range is narrow? Does he call preflop raises with A-K or J-J or does he three-bet them? What about other holdings? Does the board’s texture determine whether he continuation bets the flop? Does he “double barrel” draws (bet both the flop and turn)? Good hands? Bluffs? What is his slowplay propensity? Does he check-raise? Does he value bet thin or thick? In short, what does your opponent know, what is his mindset, and what plays is he capable of?

For defining the strength of an opponent’s range both preflop and on the flop, I use a computer tool, Flopzilla, which analyzes hand ranges and how they fare on various flops. This helps me create “feel” within my mind for how often various hands hit assorted flops.

Once you learn the plays, your hand-reading skills will separate you from other knowledgeable opponents. The better you read their hands, the better your play choice will be. And the better your choice of play, the higher your edge.

Reading hands is the toughest thing to learn in poker. It’s a never-ending learning process, nobody is perfect at it, and there is always more to learn. And you won’t always be right. Focus on your opponents, even when you’re not in a hand. Contemplate their thinking, their knowledge level, their emotional state; in short, how they determine what to play and how to play it. Additionally, reason about how to counter their thinking. What plays can you use to exploit them?

And, if you do all this well, get ready to stack the chips! ♠

Roy Cooke played poker professionally for 16 years prior to becoming a successful Las Vegas Real Estate Broker/Salesman. Should you wish any information about Real Estate matters-including purchase, sale or mortgage his office number is 702-376-1515 or Roy’s e-mail is [email protected]. His website is www.RoyCooke.com. You can also find him on Facebook or Twitter @RealRoyCooke