Reading Hands
There are three techniques for reading hands in Texas hold ‘em. Most commonly, you analyze the meaning of an opponent’s check, bet, or raise, and you look at the exposed cards and try to judge from them what his entire hand might be. You then combine the plays he has made throughout the hand with the exposed cards and come to a determination about his most likely hand. In other words, you use logic to read hands. You interpret your opponents’ plays on each round and note the cards that appear on the board, paying close attention to the order in which they appear.
You then put these two pieces of evidence together - the plays
and the cards on the board - to draw a conclusion about an opponent’s most likely hand. Sometimes you can put an opponent on a specific hand quite early. However, in general it’s a mistake to do this and then stick to your initial conclusion no matter how things develop. A player who raises before the flop and then raises again when only small cards appear on the flop may have a big pair in the hole, but he also may have just overcards or a draw and is trying for a free card. Drawing a narrow, irreversible conclusion early can lead to costly mistakes later, either because you fold the best hand or because you stay when you shouldn’t.
What you should do is to put an opponent on a variety of hands at the start ofplay, and as play progresses, eliminate some of those hands based on his later play and on the cards that appear on the board. Through this process of elimination, you should have a good idea of what that opponent has (or is drawing to) when the last card is dealt. Suppose, for instance, that two suited cards appear on the flop and an opponent raises after there has been a bet and a couple of callers, but then checks on the turn when a blank hits.
It is now very likely that he is on a flush draw and was buying a free card. If the flush card hits on the end, you usually should fold unless you can beat a flush. If a flush card does not hit, you may want to check and call in hopes that you can induce a bluff. However, if you were also on a flush draw, you may want to bet, since a reasonable chance exists that you can pick up the pot. At the end of a hand, it becomes especially crucial to have a good idea of what your opponent has. The more accurately you can read hands on the end, the better you can determine your chance of having your opponent beat. This, of course, helps you in deciding how to play your own hand.
In practice, most players at least try to determine whether an opponent has a bad hand, a mediocre hand, a good hand, or a great hand. Let’s say your opponent bets on the end. Usually when a person bets, it represents either a bluff, a good hand, or a great hand, but not a mediocre hand. If you
r opponent had a mediocre hand, he probably would check. If you have only a mediocre hand, you must determine what the chances are that your opponent is bluffing and whether those chances warrant a call in relation to the pot odds. We have seen that in hold ‘em, one way to read hands is to start by considering a variety of possible hands an opponent might have and then to eliminate some of these possibilities as the hand develops. A complementary way to read hands is to work backward. For instance, if the last card is a deuce and an opponent who has just been calling suddenly bets, you think back on his play in earlier rounds. Since it does not seem possible that he would have called this far with only two deuces in the hole, he is either bluffing or has something other than a set of deuces.
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