Hand-Reading and Pre-Empting Poker Opponents

Good poker players should be able to always learn from every situation and game. There's no such thing as an omniscient poker player. But collecting information on players is just the tip of the iceberg of poker hand-reading. Our main target is pre-empting poker opponents.

We are not only to gather and assess observed information from our poker table environs and act on them, we must eventually be able to think ahead of our opponents using their mindsets. In this way, we are able to act ahead of them before they can even start to make a move. Is this possible? It's a simple matter of expanding our resources.

Say, a player is caught bluffing in a game we're in. If we had been observing the overall game, we should have seen how the bluffing player tried to bluff. Then we can use that knowledge later against that player if we should meet that player again. Now we have a working knowledge about the player's mindset.

But let's make another step further. Often, we catch a bluffer after the player commits the bluff. How about "catching" the player before the bluff is made? In the example above, if we should meet the caught bluffer in another poker game, we would have an idea of how his mind works prior to a bluff. Thus, we would recognize the conditions when this player is apt to resort to his cheap bluff. We would be able to anticipate his bluff before he makes it. This is true with almost any strategy of the opponent. Before players finally make a move, they often leave off tracks behind them that we can trace. Then we'd know what direction they're taking and overtake them there.

Don't get this wrong. We are not saying here that we should be able to pre-empt every move opponents would do. A lot of ties we won't be able to do this. But trying to do them often can help us practice always being alert to collecting information showing up all around us in a poker game. We should enforce the habit of taking note of everything an opponent does, pre-flop, on the flop, and post flop. Even on the turn and the river, till the last steps to showdown. Then we begin to know who we're up against.

Thus, we should always look for patterns. Patterns lead to a specific end. If we identify a beginning pattern, we may often guess it's possible conclusion. That's pre-empting poker players.