Pokerwiner.com → Within poker principles
COUNTERING A GOOD READE
In poker, once you move beyond the poker fundamentals, reading hands becomes a hugely important area of play. Top players and authors generally agree that reading hands may be the single most important advanced skill. It is coupled closely with reading opponent’s thoughts what Sklansky refers to in The Theory of Poker when he explains the process of thinking about what your opponent is thinking.
Accordingly, there is a clear positive correlation between players’ skill levels and their reading abilities. In other words, better players tend to be better readers, and their reads make them money. They use them to save money on losing hands, and make more money on winning hands. Thus, when you play against such players you must counter their reading abilities. You do this, in large part, with your own reading poker skills. You read their hand, assess what they read you for (reading their read, if you will) and apply deception. The purpose of the deception is to make them put you on the wrong hand. You thus manipulate their read, leading them to play their hand differently from how they would if they read you correctly. This of course, makes you money. Often, against tougher players, the kinds of deception I am talking about go beyond routine and well known plays like raising for a free card or semi-bluffing with a draw.
Inducing the Wrong Read to Trigger Excessive Action
Here’s hand I played which provides an unusually clear example of these ideas. It was a full, nine-handed $40-$80 holdem game which had been largely unremarkable. A short while earlier Bill had taken a seat in the game. He’s player who is more skilled than most, but he does have one key weakness:Though advanced in his hand reading ability, he often fixes rigidly on a specific read, having trouble revising it in the face of contradictory evidence. This is especially costly for him because it often leads him to go too far with aggressive poker bluffing and semi-bluffing when he thinks he has a good read on an opponent’s hand. On this day he had another problem as well. He appeared to have come into the game slightly on tilt. I wasn’t sure why, but he had played even more aggressively than usual, to the point of recklessness, from the moment he joined the game.
I was in the big blind. Sitting two seats to my left, bill called before the flop. Ted, on Bill’s immediate left, also called. He is a loose, aggressive, generally mediocre player. An unfamiliar player on the button raised. This player had been raising before the flop with a remarkably wide range of hands and betting until he met resistance after the flop.
I looked down and saw:
Believing I had little chance of knocking out Bill or Ted by the reraising, I called and we took the flop four-handed. The flop was excellent for me:
Although I liked this flop, it was not immediately obvious how best to play my hand against these players. With that flop, I could only expect play from someone who had one or two sixes, a king, only expect play from someone who had one or two sixes, a King, AA, a flush draw, an in-between pair like 88, or someone who might make it beyond the flop to pick up a pair or a draw on the turn. If anyone did have 66, a king , a flush draw, or AA I would not lose him on the flop. I could try to slowly until the turn, but in addition to the two-suited flop, there was the near certainty that the player on the button was going to bet any way. When he did there would be few hands with which Bill or Ted would call (or raise) one, but not two bets.
Thus, I didn’t have to worry about knocking out anyone who was going to call one bet anyway. I could bet out and hope not to lose everyone. Maybe I would even be raised. Since I usually play against people who are familiar with me, I like to mix it up a bit in spots like this. I want my opponents to be uncertain or to misread my hand on a paired flop. That’s what led me to my third option. Given Bill’s propensity for very aggressive action based on sophisticated, logical, but rigid reads, I suspected might have an opportunity to induce excessive action from him. it required that I convince him that I did not have the trips.
The Strategic Moment in Holdem / One Way Not to Fold /
Beating the Berserko: Preflop Against a Maniac /
On Into the Storm: Playing the maniac After the Flop
One Reason to Reraise a Maniac / A Simple Read / Countering a Good Reader
Thinking About What They’re Thinking / Out On the Edge
Considerations in Two Blind Stealing Defense situations
Easing the Transition to the middle Limits: Part I
Easing the Transition to the middle Limits: Part II / Multiple Changing Images