Reading hands

[luckycharms]

How can I improve my hand-reading skills? I know they're incredibly important to have, and I am okay at it, especially in live play, but I mostly play internet ring games. The other thing is that since I always triple table, I don't really analyze my opponents different playing styles or the table tempo (unless the tempo is way out of whack or a specific player is a total maniac). Anything I can do other than just play, play, and play? THanks

[Wayfare]

Quote: "The other thing is that since I always triple table, I don't really analyze my opponents different playing styles"

Fwiw, I don't think you can get too much of a read if you aren't paying attention to the particular opponents.

This is sort of only tangentially related to reading people but it relates to reading of their bets:

One suggestion I have is that I've found that usually, a 1/4 pot bet on the flop when playing shorthanded is almost always trash; if you have a decent hand / even a draw you should almost always raise to take the pot away.

Against most opponents when you are raising with QQ or something and you run up against aces, you will find a reraise of a reasonable size...usually a min raise or a calculated raise (they took the time to type it in). Most people that I have seen who reraise all-in usually do not have AA/KK because they want to "keep people in."

[Kirkrrr]

Don't play so many tables. Playing one table at a time, you can wait for the tempo to slow down and double your stack without showing down a single hand. When playing three, you'll lose with AA and KK because there'll be far too many things you'll be missing.

If you insist on playing a lot of tables at once, the best way of doing it, IMHO, is to sit down at one table and play there for half-hour. That should give you a very good grasp of the situation. Then you can add another table, and so on. However, I really think that unless you have a very substantial amount of experience, there's simply no way you can effectively multi-table without it significantly reducing your hourly rate.

[MarcoPolo]

[ QUOTE ]
However, I really think that unless you have a very substantial amount of experience, there's simply no way you can effectively multi-table without it significantly reducing your hourly rate.

[/ QUOTE ]

I can definitely vouch for this.

I can play one table pretty well. By pretty well, I mean I'm winning more than I lose. But once I tried to get cocky and play several tables at once, my game shot to [censored] really fast.

Back to grinding out one table at a time for me.

I don't know how these guys do several tables at once. I hope to be that good some day!

[Snag]

This might sound crazy, but my monitor can fit two NL 25 games (hell it can fit four, but two is enough) at a time. As such, I usually only double table. Triple tabling takes it a step to far, and my game decreases, because I am trying to hard to focus in too many places. Try knocking your game down to two, and then from there, just study your opponents betting patterns, and read the hands they play with, call raises with, etc. You'll be all the better for it.

~Snag