I haven't realized until recently that I have a huge hole in my game. It's not that I don't know the math behind the game; that is something I know I need to brush up on. My biggest glaring weakness in my current game is that I can't see past my own cards. Many poker aficionados consider certain levels of poker. Level one is a general knowledge of the game and how to play the hand your dealt. Level two is an understanding of your opponents hands and how they play.
I do not excercise this practice enough. What good is knowing my own hole cards when I don't know what my opponent is holding. 2 + 2 equals 4... not 2 + 0 = 4!
So lets try to break down the readily available information that we can use to gain more information about an opponents hand.
1. Board Texture
2. Betting Pattern
3. Timing
Board Texture:
It can be pretty easy to pick out a flush, but a straight tends to be more tricky, especially if your opponent holds a suited one-gap (two cards like 7,9 or 8,10 of the same suit). What is even harder is putting an opponent on a sneaky small set, or a higher boat (full-house) than you have. This is where most people lose the majority of their money; either those instances or if you run into a higher pair than you have. However typically if you hold pocket 6's and your opponent is holding 8's the pot shouldn't ge that big. So how can we get a clearer idea of what our opponent is holding?
Betting patterns tend to give away what an opponent is holding. The old adage is that weak is strong and strong is weak. Try to wrap that one around your head if that is the first time you are reading those words. I often find that if I am holding the nuts I try to entice my opponents to walk right into it. It tends to be more difficult then you think though. On the flip side, in lower limit games that I have been playing the adage seems a bit defunct. If a player acts strong he tends to be strong ,and for that matter if he acts strong he is also weak. The lower limits tend to rule by constant aggressiveness though, however I would like to try potting more of my bets. By this I mean that in later betting rounds I would like to try to bet the amount that is currently in the pot. Sometimes I feel as though my continuation bets, or my standard 3x raise does not do enough to scare my opponents into folding a marginal hand, a better hand, or a drawing hand. I think I will attempt to make pot sized bets more often to see if this affects my outcome.
Timing seems to be everything to me lately. Often I will watch an opponent act very strong pre-flop. When the cards are dealt on the flop though they tend to lack a certain confidence that I can pick up in the timing of the bet (which tends to be smaller than at first) or check. This has worked out for me recently by re-raising in these instances.
It can be very hard to call an opponents range, or even try to put an opponent on a specific hand, but I don't really do this ever. In order to improve my game it needs to be something I incorporate into every hand I am dealt or it will decrease my chances of making money. Every hand needs 100% conentration and every hand should be used as a learning opportunitiy to find out what my opponents are playing with.
