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Poker Strategy - Reading Your Opponents I

Posted on March 8, 2008

In order to win at online poker, it is imperative to you understand how to read your opponents. The topic of reading opponents is quite broad so for this first poker lesson, I want to focus on general concepts which can be applied to most poker games. So if your game is Texas Hold’em, Omaha, RAZZ or something else that involves playing against other humans, the following fundamental concepts will help you make better decisions. I will write this article in three parts, so you can gradually integrate the concepts in your game.

What does reading your opponents entail?

First, let’s define what reading your opponent means. There is a misconception that reading opponents means that you get an indication of how strong or how weak other players’ hands are. But in fact, it is much more than that. Reading opponents also involves an understanding of the mood and trends at the poker table you are playing. It includes the analysis of how other players perceive you, for example.

Reading opponents isn’t magical, out of this world, supernatural, does not require voodoo rituals or prayers. It is an analytical process where you look for clues and link them together to reach a conclusion on a specific aspect of the game. That means that reading opponents is in fact a logical exercise that can be taught and learned. And like anything you can learn, experience can only help. Always remember that the information used to read opponents is ALWAYS based on actions taken by others, or on specific game triggers which I will describe in a later part of this article series.

Get a feel for your poker table

Whether you are playing a tournament or a cash game, you always want to be aware of the mood of your table. It is therefore imperative that you analyze how opponents react to specific situations and this information can be acquired on all hands, even the ones you are not involved in. The key to winning at poker is to adapt your playing style so that it fits your environment and the people you play against. So if you want to determine if the table is generally tight for instance, then study how people react to raises (your own, or from other players). More importantly, consider the table position of the raiser and the amount of the raise in proportion to the big blind. So if someone raises 3 times the big blind in early position, and the rest of the table folds except the people in the blind positions, then you may in fact be facing a tight table. To gauge the table mood, you can’t base it on one hand, or one event. So look for the early raiser situation and analyze the reactions each time.

Analyze the poker style of your opponents

Once you get e general feel of the table, then try to attribute a profile to players. To start, keep things simple. Just identify who’s conservative and who’s aggressive. Sure, there’s different ways to described poker styles and there’s certainly more than two styles out there, but start by dividing opponents in two categories. You can start by examining the first betting action phase, when players make their first decision. Determine who’s playing a lot of hands vs who’s folding frequently as this is a big indicator. People who play many hands are people who like risks and rely more on luck. They want to get in cheap and hope to hit a flop. People who fold frequently usually like to get involved with good starting hands only. Once you’ve allocated a player to be passive or aggressive, take your analysis further and study how the react to pressure. Usually, the conservative types aren’t the ones who raise a lot. They are the ones you like to put under pressure with a raise of your own, because when they have nothing, they tend to fold. Aggressive players on the other hand like to raise a lot, and they have to. By playing so many hands your chip count goes down over time so to compensate, you need to steal some pots with some great timed bluffs. Aggressive players are harder to read because sometimes they do get great poker hands. So when you raise one and they reraise you back, it’s harder to determine if they actually have something or if they’re making a move. But it’s not impossible…

Part two of this article will be released next week.

This article is provided by MyPokerCorner.com. We promote effective poker strategies for all poker players.

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