Taking the guesswork out of hand-reading

When it comes to reading your opponent’s hand in a poker game there are two separate steps that need to be taken and then merged together, both with their own information you need to take a look at: The first is concrete data (or as concrete as you can get in poker!) and the second is where you need to draw conclusions -to guess for lack of a better term.

The first pieces of information you want to gather are the absolutes, what I refer to as putting the puzzle pieces together. Now, some opponent’s are about as complicated as a wooden puzzle with two pieces, while reading other opponent’s can be like trying to put together a 10,000 piece jigsaw puzzle of a black table.

On the other hand you have information that is implied at best, what I refer to as unraveling a mystery. Unlike putting a puzzle together, when it comes to unraveling a mystery you can never really be certain what the answer is; you just make your best educated guess -like why were the pyramids built, or what’s the deal with Stonehenge: Chances are we will never definitively know the answer.

Now the best hand-readers are able to combine these two concepts together to and put as much of the puzzle together as they can, and then fill in the gaps -the mysteries-with their best guesses. And you must do this while your opponent is likely feeding you the biggest bunch of propaganda imaginable!

Putting the Puzzle Pieces Together: Trying to differentiate between a puzzle and a mystery is a difficult concept by itself, and many players often confuse the two concepts –which is about as helpful as mixing two different puzzles together and then trying to put them together. The puzzle pieces you are looking for should be either absolutes, or very, very near:

• Likely hand ranges and betting patterns of players you have a lot of experience with
• Hand Combos based on seen cards -Baye’s Theorem
• Certain tells that are very reliable for this specific player, which also requires a track-record with the player

Unraveling Mysteries: As you can see there is very little information we can lump into the puzzle category, especially if you are not overly familiar with the specific player, so the vast majority of the information we have available falls into the category of unraveling a mystery. When it comes to mysteries we are looking for the following bits of information:

• Certain generic poker tells
• A players general style of play
• Any meta-gaming that may be taking place
• The player’s current mindset -Tilting, distracted, tired, etc.

And as I said earlier, what makes hand reading all the more difficult is that your opponent will constantly be trying to deceive you at every turn. Therefore, an integral part of hand-reading has to do with decoding the propaganda of your opponent.

Your overall goal is to take whatever ‘facts’ you have and then fill in the gaps. In essence you are something like a geneticist from Jurassic Park; working with incomplete information -and like the Jurassic Park geneticists, if you put too much faith in your conclusions you could wind up in a very bad place!