[Aaron W.]

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I agree it is an interesting post, but I find the example a little pedantic, and irrelevant to most play.

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Yeah, I picked this particular player because the progression of hands which led to the read were close to successive and fairly striaghtforward.

The reason I wrote it all out was to show *HOW* the read progresses from a suspicion, to a tentative read, to a more solid read, and how the play adjusts accordingly. If you're not paying attention, you could easily have missed villain's overplayed flop on the A8 hand (only remembering that you split with another 8), or not remembering that he is capable of bluffing the turn AND river (he didn't give up his bluff on the river on the AAKK hand). Remembering these things is central to developing a solid read.

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It is not hard to figure out when someone is a habitual bluffer, and it is not hard to adjust to playing them... On the other hand it is much more difficult to adjust to a player capable of bluffing, but who is not a habitual bluffer... but if you base your read of the player on a set of 50 hands it can often be hard to tell the difference between an agressive player getting a feel for the table, and a maniac bluffer.

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I disagree with this. Of course the read isn't perfect after very few hands, but you can't wait forever to start playing off your reads. As time progresses, your reads become more solid, but if you're paying attention at a short-handed table (where villains are playing 30-50% of their hands), you should have at least a moderate read after 30-40 hands (5-7 orbits). And this is often enough to tell you how to start adjusting your play.

At a full table, it would take a little longer because players are generally a little tighter (so you have less information about them), but you should still start making adjustments by about hand 50. (To put it in perspective, if you were playing live, you would have played with everyone for about 75-90 minutes by this time. If you can't make any useful observations in that span, you're not paying enough attention.)

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Getting 'reads' on people is simply not as easy as observing a few hands and drawing a singular conclusion. People adjust as the table changes, so our reads cannot be static.

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Yes and no. Getting reads on people (at these levels) is more complicated than observing a few hands, but I don't think it's as complicated as you imagine it to be. Players (at these levels) barely adjust their game. Things that look like adjustments are often just a quirk in their standard strategy (not a true "adjustment") or something completely random (not part of an overall scheme).

Please note that this entire conversation is based on READS and not PT STATS.