Improving Your Board Reading and Hand Evaluation Skills With Advanced Poker TrainingCheck Out AdvancedPokerTraining.com To Sharpen Your Game Today |
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“YOUR @&$&#%* PROGRAM KEEPS GIVING THE CHIPS TO MY OPPONENT WHEN I WON THE HAND!”
The first time I got an email like that from an Advanced Poker Training member, I panicked.
Especially when I received similar emails several times in one day. For many weeks, I diligently hunted down the hands, and was surprised (and relieved) to find that the logic in awarding these pots was working just fine. Ten years later, I’m still waiting to find the first mistake in our software.
As the person who responds to such inquiries on a site with over 120 million hands played, you can imagine that I get varied and interesting comments. However, the second most common email is, “the wrong hand got the chips,” trailing only the ubiquitous “your site won’t let me log in.”
These emails expose some very interesting attributes of poker players. First, they are very confident and difficult to dissuade even when shown their error. Second, they are prone to repeated mistakes when it comes to reading boards and evaluating winning hands. Further, 90 percent of misread boards are a result of missing the possibilities for their opponent’s hand improving on the river.
The money that players lose due to misread boards or an inability to identify possible opponent holdings must be astronomical. There are two main areas where most poker players can use improvement (myself included). First, poker players of all skill levels have a difficult time recognizing the nuts given a specific board. Second, they have a hard time knowing if their hand is favored against the range of hands their opponents may hold.
AdvancedPokerTraining.com has created two fun (and somewhat addictive) free games to help players of all ability levels improve their board reading and hand strength evaluation skills. If you think these topics are too basic for you, I offer a challenge.
The first game is called, “What’s The Nuts?” The objective is exactly what the name says: for a given set of board cards, at either flop, turn, or river, determine the hole cards to make the best possible hand. This may seem elementary, but I challenge you to correctly identify the nuts 50 hands in a row in less than 5 minutes. The game has many options and tracks your progress for both accuracy and speed. Although accuracy is the primary goal, speed is also important because the more time you spend staring at the board, the more information you convey to opponents and the less time you spend watching them!
The second game is called, "The Upper Hand.” In this game, you are provided hole cards, and you must select any opponent hands that are favored against yours at a given stage from preflop through the river. This skill is one of the most critical in poker. Once you identify your opponents’ ranges, knowing what portion of that range beats you is critical to making the right decision. This game is much more difficult and I challenge you to complete 10 hands in a row without making an error.
AdvancedPokerTraining.com has also introduced several other free tools, including a tool that lets you define your opponent’s range and see your odds against it, one that lets you compute a fair chop in a tournament, and another that tells you whether to shove or fold in tournament end-game situations.
All of these tools and games can be accessed by signing up for a free account at advancedpokertraining.com and clicking the “Tools and Games” tab from the member page. With a little practice, you will be dominating your opponents in no time!
Allen Blay is a co-founder of AdvancedPokerTraining.com, along with his brother Steve. In his non-poker life, Allen researches judgment and decision-making as an Associate Professor of Accounting at Florida State University.
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