Reading your opponents is a lot like riding a bike. You can become good at it but a stone in the road can throw you to the ground. Our poker pain can hurt as much as a real bike fall because it usually involves missing out on, or losing a chunk of money and no poker player likes doing that. Once you have grasped the ABC’s of Poker and are ready to take it to the next level then reading your opponents is the next thing you should focus on in developing your poker skills.

Annette “Annette_15” Obrestad said that her big breakthrough in poker came when she stopped just doing “the right thing” according to simple poker theory and started making moves according to opportunities given to her that were situational dependant, i.e. dependant on reads she made. An amateur player may throw their hands in the air saying “I’ve spent ages learning theory, now you want me to throw it out of the window!” Panic not. We are not asking you to forget strategy but to learn new ones that help you win more money. An artist must learn what perspective is before learning to paint buildings, just as a player must learn poker skills like fold equity, starting hands and river play before moving on to master the more advanced strategies.

Poker reads are pieces of information that you use either from observing or taking note of your opponent’s tendencies through their hand strength on showdown. This includes body language and reactions to hands, however subtle.

An example of a read or Poker tell could be something like this; Player A raises under the gun and calls a check raise on the flop, check calls on the turn then checks the river a show A8, losing to top pair better kicker. Regardless whether he won the hand what assumptions, or reads, can we make here?

Firstly his raise under the gun suggests he will play a wide range of starting hands. A8 is not a hand to raise with first in, so perhaps this is a weak player. This helps us straight away. Moving through the hand he is check raised on the flop and calls. This suggest he was playing trickily with his pair of Aces (let’s assume the Ace fell on the flop giving him top pair) but did not understand about his weak kicker. His opponents check raise suggests either a set, or better Ace as they called a pre-flop raise. The player looks weak here by not realising he is probably behind to this open showing of strength. He obviously gets married to his hand check calling all the way, but perhaps not totally terrible as he knows not to raise. He has overplayed the hand but not incredibly so. His check-check on the river suggests there was some awareness that his kicker is not great and if possible no more money should be put into the pot. So I would put him in the slightly below average standard player, then look for confirmation on this in the way he plays a future hand. By check calling down on the turn and river he looks like he wants to check all the way but is worried he may be ahead so cannot fold. In future hands if you have anything better than top pair you can bet for value against this player.

If you are in a spot where you would normally not fire a barrel on the turn, but you are playing a hand with a player who can fold easily, a 60-70% of the pot bet may be enough to win the hand. Look closely at a player when they are looking at their cards and the look at their chips deciding whether to bet. See if you can guess “bet or fold” in your head before you see them act. This can let you know vital information on their openness to the emotions experienced on their first impressions of their hands. This gives you a great edge if you find a player you can read like this.

One word of caution though. Some players deliberately give off “bluff tells” setting you up for a later bluff. A player may shake his head and fold and then on one occasion shake his head and bet. You think “Gotcha!” believing the shaking of the head represents a bad hand and re-raise him with nothing only for him to reveal the nuts. He may have planted the tell. Most players do not do this but the lesson here is to consider your own hand at all times. When bluffs go wrong they cost chips and you should not be overdoing it. On the whole, however, I would always play in accordance with my reads as that separates the bad players from the good players and the great players from the good players.

By Malcolm Clarke