Learning to Hand Read

I’ve been really working at improving my hand reading. I’ve noticed I’m getting better at putting opponents on a hand, but there’s still so much to learn.
When involved in a hand, I try to:

• mentally summarise the action so far: who raised/bet/called, and from what position etc.
• mentally recap what I already know about my opponent(s),

Then I assign my opponent a likely range of holdings and try to determine the best way to play my own hand against this perceived range.

That sounds very mathematical but really (for me anyway) it’s more about having a good idea of my opponents general strength rather than actually putting him on a specific holding.

I say to myself stuff like:

• “With what strength hands will my opponent do x, y and z preflop?”
• “What kind of hands does this opponent play that could have hit this flop?”
• “With what strength hands would he be likely to bet this type of flop?”
• “Does his flop bet represent a stronger hand than mine given what I know about him, or is it probably just a routine continuation bet?”
• “If I think I have the best hand, should I raise or should I just flat call?"
  
• “If I just call, will he fire again on the turn?”
• “If I raise will he fold weaker hands and only continue with stronger hands?”
• “Will he give up on the turn if he doesn’t improve?”
• “If he checks the turn can I take the pot off him?”
• “What strength hand would he need to bet the turn?”
• “Should I lead into this opponent on the river, or check and give him a chance to bluff?”

There are many many more, depending on the type of situation.

Like I say I'm getting better, but I still occasionally fall down when I neglect to do the active thinking that is required to properly analyse a situation. I can be mentally lazy and sometimes allow myself to cruise along and work on “feel”. Feel works well for many situations but for the more difficult situations, you have to actively think the situation through.

Let’s talk about a hand I played the other night. I was feeling mentally sharp and up for a good session. I'd been sat down about 20 minutes and had been closely observing the action at the table, and player ATLnomad in particular. First, have a read through the hand history and then I’ll explain my thinking on why I played the hand the way I did.

Hand History for Game 11936460

$0.25/$0.5 Blinds No Limit Hold'em - *** 06 09 20:38:17 2008

Seat 9 is the button

Total number of players : 6

Seat 10: ATLnomad ( $48.5 )

Seat 3: pie333 ( $49.25 )

Seat 5: joytoyboy ( $51.04 )

Seat 6: jopielans ( $46.51 )

Seat 7: KKLouie ( $96 )

Seat 9: Hero ( $53.16 )

ATLnomad posts small blind [$0.25].

pie333 posts big blind [$0.5].

** Dealing down cards **

Dealt to Hero [ 9h Qh ]

joytoyboy folds.

jopielans calls [$0.5].

KKLouie folds.

Hero calls [$0.5].

ATLnomad raises [$2.75].

pie333 folds.

jopielans folds.

Hero raises [$9.5].

ATLnomad calls [$7].

** Dealing Flop ** [ 9d, 5c, 4d ]

ATLnomad bets [$15].

Hero raises [$43.16].

ATLnomad calls [$23.5].

** Dealing Turn ** [ Ac ]

** Dealing River ** [ 7c ]

** Summary **

ATLnomad shows [ As Qs ].

Hero shows [ 9h Qh ].

Hero shows [ 9h Qh ].

ATLnomad shows [ As Qs ].

ATLnomad collected [$94].

Hero collected [$4.66].

In a vacuum without any reads my play looks like risky. But before deciding whether it's a good or bad play, let’s look at my opponent and see how the action in the current hand went.

ATLnomad was a tight and aggressive player. I had seen him a few times before, and had some PAHUD stats on him. In table chat he used poker buzz words like “EV” and “coin flip”. His stats (over several hundred hands) were typical of a student of the game who probably spends a lot of time on Cardrunners and the twoplustwo forums:

Voluntary Put Money In The Pot: 20%

Preflop Raise: 18%

Attempt to Steal Blinds: 23%

Post Flop Aggression: 2.5

He also had a very high % of flop continuation bets.

You don’t get stats like PFR 18% against a VP$IP of 20% by accident. This is a guy who has deliberately adopted a certain style of play and worked at it. He is almost always raising when first in, and limping very very infrequently. He bets aggressively post flop.

Watching him for a few minutes I noticed he was raising nearly every time from the button and the majority of the time in the cutoff. Sometimes he raised when first in the pot, and other times after 1 or 2 players limped he made it 6 or 7bb.

In one hand ATLnomad was in the small blind and reraised a tightish and reasonably aggressive player who opened in the cut-off seat. Both players had more than 100bb stacks. The cutoff re-popped it back and in response ATLnomad shoved, a raise nearly 6 times the size of the cutoffs reraise. Cutoff called. ATLnomad had QQ and the cutoff had AK. The cutoff hit a king on the flop, which held up.

I don’t like ATLnomad’s play here. What is the cutoff’s range for putting in the third raise? Pretty tight I’d say, AA-JJ, AK and maybe AQs.

And when ATLnomad pushes all-in, what’s the cutoffs range for calling all-in? Against a fairly tight player? Even tighter. Against the vast majority of tight players I think you are talking about AA-QQ and maybe AK. And that’s it.

Given those are reasonable ranges to assign, the best hope for ATLnomad was to be against AK, which makes him a slight favourite. Worst case is he’s up against AA/KK.

Against {QQ+, AK+}, ATLnomad is a significant dog, about 38%, according to PokerStove. You can be pretty sure the other guy is not going to fold so raising all-in hoping for a coin flip seems like a bad play.

The above hand, and his overfrequent raising in LP made me think (in spite of his TAG statistics) that he may be aggressive to a fault preflop and prone to gambling on coin flips; and might be steaming a bit from the QQ hand. So given what I know about him so far, here is how I thought the hand through as I played it…...

Recall from the hand history, I’m on the button with Q-9h and ATLnomad is in the sb. I decide to limp in …. I know it’s “non-standard” in these days of hyper-aggression, but I have reasons. I had decided in advance that ATLnomad was very likely to raise if I limped. And then I would re-pop him. If for some reason he didn’t raise I could take a flop in position with a hand that has some potential.

My logic was this: as a thinking player he would know that I know he would raise (!!!). I also felt my image was pretty tight in his eyes. Given these two things he might conclude I trapped him by limp-reraising with a big hand…. And if he thought that I trapped him, then there was a reasonable chance he would throw his hand away. His LP raising range was probably quite wide as I had seen him raising limpers from the blinds several times. So there would be a lot of hands in his range that he wouldn’t feel comfortable continuing with against a decent size raise.

As expected, when I limp he fires out a 5.5bb raise, and the bb folds. This raise could be a medium strength hand that wants to take the pot now. The raise looks oversized seeing there is just one player (me) limping, but maybe that’s because he is out of position and wants to take it down now. I’m also aware he may be steaming a bit. So I deliberately take my time before acting, to give him a chance to worry about getting burnt agin so soon after the QQ hand.

I make it 20 bb…….but he calls. His is just too taggy to slowplay a big pair in this situation - when his opponent reraised him in the QQ hand he pushed all-in preflop, so I’m pretty sure the flat call indicates the absence of a big pair. I think a big ace like AK is most likely but a medium pair may also be in his range.

The flop comes 9 high with two small cards and no flush draw, giving me top pair with a good kicker. ATLnomad leads out for ¾ of the pot, which at this stage contains 42 bb’s. This, along with his preflop raise followed by a flat call, stinks of an “end it now bet”. Why lead out ¾ pot into the preflop aggressor if you have a strong hand. Why not check to him and try to make some money?

My gut says my queen nine is ahead, but I’m very vunerable to turn or river overcards. The pot is now a decent size and any money I put in will commit me anyway so I go with my read and put him all-in. The all-in raise gives him odds of about 2 to 1 and he has half of his stack in already so he makes a crying call and turns over AQ for no pair, no draw. So he has only the 3 aces as outs and is a 5.5 to 1 dog. Lucky for him he hit an Ace on the turn and my hand doesn’t improve.

In this case I read the situation correctly. You might ask “What if he had flopped a set?”. But that’s where his betting pattern and previous history comes in. Here is a summary of how I analysed the situation in my head:

“ATLnomad is a tight and aggressive player and somewhat knowlegable but is prone to gambling it up now and again. He likes raising from position and probably knows I’m aware of that. Likely he sees me as fairly tight and has seen me limp fold preflop a couple of times.

He lost a big pot a few minutes ago in what was essentially a coin flip. In this hand I’ve limped from the button and he raised from the sb. I reraised him back and he just flat called my reraise. A few mins ago he put in a fourth raise (all-in) with QQ against a quite tight player. Given his flat call this time, it is unlikely he has a big pair. Most likely is a big ace. A small/medium pair is possible but unlikely as my preflop raise represents a bigger pair and it’s size prices him out of drawing to a set to stack me.

On the flop he led into me for close to a pot size bet even though I was the last raiser preflop. Why would he do that on a raggy flop if he had a hand that wanted action? This looks weak and the action fits best with a hand that missed the flop. The flop lead also looks a bit dubious for a hidden monster. His most likely holding is whiffed overcards.

I have top pair with a good kicker but my hand is very vulnerable to overcards. Calling will pretty much commit me but will also put me in a difficult position on the turn, as there are very few cards that I will be happy to see. I’m likely ahead but need to protect my hand. Given the size of the stacks an all-in raise is the best way to do it.”

‘Til the next time….