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January 26 — A lot of hand reading has to do with pegging your opponent’s preflop range—raised pot, position etc.

Hand reading in no-limit is a skill that gets shaped with experience. You can teach someone the fundamentals and tell them what typical actions and betting patterns mean, but you cannot teach the innate ability to have “feel,” especially as it relates to the strength of an opponent’s hand.

One of the things that I say in my training material over at CrushLivePoker.com that is often overlooked in reading someone’s hand is probably the easiest to identify—the preflop action. If we know that someone is a tight player, we can surmise a reasonable preflop range for them based upon position and we can then take that information to help us read their range later on.

Let us take a look at a hand that I recently played at $5-$10 last week. The villain in this particular spot was a young guy, played relatively tight, and I knew he respected my game. In fact, I had even remembered making a training video about some situations that he been involved in on Live at The Bike in the last year and I knew that he played pretty snug. The action got around to me and, with effective stacks of $1,400, I opened to $30 with 8 7 on the button. The villain was directly to my left and flat called in the small blind. The big blind folded and we saw a flop of A 9 6. The small blind checked and I thought this was an excellent spot to make a semibluff continuation bet, as I was open-ended and would have a fair amount of aces in my range, so I went ahead and bet $45. The small blind thought for a while and called. This is where a lot of people would not use important preflop information when going through a hand reading process.

At first, I thought that this was going to be an excellent place for me to fire multiple barrels, as I had decent equity and it would be logical to infer that my opponent did not hold a big ace because of the flat call preflop. Oftentimes it is not the best approach to try and bluff someone off of top pair at these levels but knowing the history of this particular opponent leaned me toward that direction. Obviously the small blind could have held a flush draw or straight draw, nine or six as well. Or could he? If I was in his particular spot and I had a good player that I respected raise on the button I would be hard-pressed to call with hands that contained any 9 or 6 in them, except maybe A-9 or A-6 and possibly some of the ungapped suited connectors, but even with those hands, I would three-bet them with some frequency.

This is pretty valuable information, as it really skews the small blind’s range to having an ace or a flush draw. The turn was one of the worst cards in the deck for me, the A, completing the flush and putting two aces on the board. I have talked before here in this column about double barreling cards that may not be the best turn cards and how to determine when to make these unorthodox bets. Usually I have said that you should do so when you have equity—like a straight draw or flush draw. However, if I were saying that the small blind rarely has a 9 or a 6 and his range is skewed more towards aces and flush draws, then betting here on fourth street really would be a spew.

Again, this is not anything advanced, it is just properly recognizing that a tight player is going to flat call tight out of the small blind, especially against a player he respects, and it allows me to logically reason and hand read in a more accurate fashion post flop.

February 1 — If a scare card comes in that makes your hand and your are OOP leading is usually a better lead than checking

One of the things that always baffles me about bad players is that they basically get the absolute minimum when they make their draws—especially if the draw completes on the turn. It is as if someone told these players that the best way to play no-limit is by being deceptive and to check or to “trap.” Of course we know that this is rarely the best approach in maximizing your value in a cash game. It would be one thing if these players would make up for their lost value by betting larger on the river when the turn gets checked through, but this rarely, if ever, happens.

If you watch a really common scenario at the mid-stakes of live no-limit, you will see someone check-call the flop with some sort of draw. Then they will make the draw on the turn, and especially if the card is quite obvious or scary, like a third suit front door flush draw completing, they will check and the player with the flop aggression will check behind.

The amazing thing is that it is not like the flop bettor is going to fold all that often if the out of position player donk leads when he makes his draw, especially when the draw is a flush and the flop aggressor has a pair with one of the flush cards in his hand. And, in a lot of cases, if the preflop raiser has an overpair, you are going to get turn and river value. So why check when the flush comes in?

Another common example of these dumb plays is when an out of position player makes a straight when the board comes out as a one-liner. Take a hand that I played at $10-$20 at the Commerce Casino a few weeks ago. After a single limper, the cutoff made it $90 with about $3,000 in his stack. I covered him, called in the big blind with A J, and the limper folded. The flop came out 10 8 7 and I checked. The cutoff now bet $130 and I decided to call with my gutshot straight draw, back door flush draw, and overcard to the board. I also thought I could represent some scary cards such as front door hearts, a jack, or a six. The turn brought out one of the best cards in the world for me, the 9, giving me a jack-high straight and the nut spade draw. This is exactly the situation that I see so many bad players misplay. It really can appear to my opponent that I could have a front door heart draw and, because so few people ever lead when they make their straight on the turn, I thought it was a great spot to bet. I also assumed that if I checked, the preflop raiser would often check back and I would lose out on the possibility of getting two streets of value instead of one. I ended up betting small on the turn and followed through with a larger river bet, trying to make it look like I missed something, and won a nice size pot.

Lastly, and almost the most ridiculous, are the players that call the flop and the turn with a draw only to check the river when they complete. It is dumbfounding to me when they sheepishly turn over their hands after their opponents check back at the end. Why call all that money when you are not going to bet when you make it? Even though it makes your hand easy to read, if your opponent is not going to bet a vast majority of the time, then you have to bet your hand yourself. It also demonstrates the fact that the value of draws are diminished when you are first to act in big bet games. ♠

Follow Bart for daily strategy tips on Twitter @CrushLivePoker and @BartHanson. Check out his poker training site exclusively made for live cash game play at CrushLivePoker.com where he produces weekly podcasts and live training videos.