From the Text Book: HAND READING

[naphand]

The reason I ask is that almost every responder has assumed the player is "reasonable" to some degree. No-one appears to have considered an unknown player may have an unexpected hand.

That said, there are clearly quite a number of "not entirely unreasonable" hands that would play out the same way. I had reasons for choosing this particular hand, one of which was to see what kind of ranges forum-people would put "unknowns" on. It seems some people misunderstood the post, or feel it was not as obvious as I suggested, which is fair comment. However, I still believe that when confronted by an unknown player we need to be prepared for surprises and I for one feel quite reluctant to lay this down here.

[SeaEagle]

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However, I still believe that when confronted by an unknown player we need to be prepared for surprises and I for one feel quite reluctant to lay this down here.


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I'm wouldn't have laid your hand down (due to pot odds), but I think you can believe villian is a pretty horrible player and still recognize you're almost always losing after the turn raise. Maybe that means I give unknowns more credit than you, I dunno.

In this hand, when villian raised the turn after you 3-bet both PF and the flop, even a total donk is going to have a hand that beats TPGK. I don't have to give villian credit for playing a good hand PF; I only have to give him credit for knowing all my betting means I have a big hand, and that he thinks his hand is beating it. I'd figure I was either ahead of AQ or KK, or that villian had picked up any of the myriad hands that are beating me.

[naphand]

Yes, yes I call and expect to lose this almost every time.

Against unknowns who cold-call or do other strange things I am even more inclined to see the SD, on a table with only 2-3 bad players it is worth finding out very quickly who they are and just what they are capable of. I probably do call a little too much in such spots, is it a price worth paying do you think? Card-based reads are worth a lot more than PT stats IMO.

The counter-argument is, of course, that bad players tend to reveal themselves pretty quickly (and we do have the "View previous hand" function to reveal pockets on any SD hand played).

NB
What the hell is "inadvertently ironic" [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]