Post deleted by Mat Sklansky

[Erasure]

[ZManODS]

[ QUOTE ]
Hello,

Some players have strong hand reading skills. Is there a way to read if a pre-flop raiser has missed the flop?


[/ QUOTE ]

How come "hand reading" and "bluffing" posts always come from inexperienced players. Maybe because so many people are naive and believe that this is how people win.

I dont want to sound rude but your question is ridicolous. There are so many factors. First you need to know how the player plays, his raising standards, hit betting patterns... etc

It sounds like you are probably new so the best advice would to learn the game first THEN try to develop your hand reading skills. When you actually have a good understanding of the game, reading peoples hands/betting patterns becomes clearer.

Good luck.

[CrackerZack]

Hand reading is very necessary, but not by tells. Its by betting patterns. Did he miss the flop? Who knows? Did he bet the flop? If so, would he always bet the flop after raising PF? To answer your question, unless you're sitting there and see him grimace or give another tell, you probably can't tell.

[Mike Gallo]

Some players have strong hand reading skills.

In order to become a winning player you will need to learn these skills. You cannot get around this.

Theory of Poker has a good section on reading hands. After you gain experience you will put opponents on hands from watching them play and the betting patterns they use.

[JTrue]

Zman, You are being rude and no that question is not ridiculous, I am sure when you started playing you wanted to know more about reading hands.

[37offsuit]

I usually figure a guy missed when he says something like, "oh man, I can't believe the flop came A, K, Q on my pair of 9's" as he throws them at the dealer and I can sure enough see at least one 9 flip over on the table.

Reading hands is about a number of things that you can gather from watching someone play. There are different levels of it as well.

First, some practice. Many people allow themselves to be distracted during play, whether it's playing online with the TV on or in a BM while pounding beers and chatting wildly to everyone at the table in between hands.

Since if you're playing intelligently, you're only going to be involved in less than a third of the hands (depending on which of the many strategies you use), that leaves a lot of time for you to watch players. Usually, the best thing to do in my opinion is to start with the players that act before you, since they're the ones who will have you making choices most often about when to raise, call, check or fold. Figure out what starting cards they'll limp with (call one bet), cold call (call two bets without any of their money yet in the pot) or raise with. You do this by following their action on a hand and seeing their cards when they show down.

So if they'll raise what are called premium hands, fold most junk, but limp with any ace or two suited, and only cold call with any ace, then you have a good idea what they might have each time they see the flop depending on what it's cost them/if they've raised. This puts them on a range of hands.

Next you want to narrow that range by how they play after the flop. Do they always bet if no one bets before them, no matter if they hit the flop or not? If so, then you can devalue the information you get when it's checked to them and they raise. If they only raise when they do hit it, well then that gives you valuable information.

Have you ever seen them bluff? What about call down with middle pairs and show second best often? Do they do this frequently?

Basically, that's what you do to read hands at a general level. Try to examine the information that they are presenting to you.

Now, after you get one person down, move on to the next. It may seem like a lot of work and it is, but you'll find it gets easier to remember more and more information on each person and instead of seeing someone lead out after betting preflop, you'll see a steal attempt or a legitimately hit flop.

After you get good at this, you'll find you can categorize people. Seat 3 is a calling station. Don't bother bluffing him and fear his raises. Seat 6 is a maniac. If you've got the goods, reraise him to isolate. The guy on the button is a tight-passive, he called two cold preflop and now he's betting out when an ace hits the board. Fold unless you have a monster.

You can move on to tells and despite what you might see on the televised tournys, most people at your local card room will noticably sigh or grimace when they're weak, and smile brightly when they've hit something. You will get some actors, and Caro's Book of Poker Tells is good for learning them. I usually assume any weak passive player's tells are not acting, while maniacs will often over act. The tight-aggressive player probably has read a lot of poker books, that's why he's tight aggressive, so he'll tone down both his actual tells and his acting tells. Still, you can usually figure out from observing what tells are meant for you to see and which ones the person doesn't know about.

You'll often be surprised how, if you're friendly enough at a table, how many people will tell you flat out what they've got, especially if they've reraised you and you ask them if they've hit the obvious hand that would cause someone to bet out. Guy's been calling bets since the flop gave two diamonds, now a third diamond hits the river and he bets out. If you've been chatting with him for a while and you ask him, "you rivered your flush, didn't you?" He might just tell you. Just make sure he's not the type to lie to your face (yes there is a difference between lieing with a bluff bet and actually saying the words).

I could of course go on and on, this is just mostly general stuff. The point is that it's worth learning all of this because it will save you bets when you pick up a strong indication that you're beat, and will win you whole pots when you figure out that someone is most likely bluffing and instead of either folding or calling, you reraise him with your mediocre hand, forcing out winning top pairs and the like, and taking the pot from him.