Hand-Reading to Beat Poker Players

Detecting poker tells—like behavioral manifestations in players that betray their situation and intentions—is never a major strategy to be used and is not a very reliable winning tool in poker. However, hand-reading to beat poker players is.

Hand-reading is gathering empirical information from opponents from what we have observed as their current hand play based on what seemed to be their previous hand plays. In poker, we can never have all the information we need on other players. What we can have are close calculations, plus what we observe to be the opponent's obvious play and behavioral patterns. We use these observations to size up the player and what the player possibly has.

Hand-reading to beat poker players is mostly based on their betting sequences to see what they are most likely to do as opposed to what they're trying to show us. Hand-reading is more interesting and informative than behavioral reading, though the latter can help a lot in the former. Hand-reading can also be mind-reading in that we try to assess what the opponent is thinking, what hand the opponent has, how a poker situation affects the opponent, what the opponent intends to do, and what the opponent thinks of us.

Sometimes hand-reading plus behavioral reading can be so powerful that we can almost actually see what hands other players have. This is often seen in poker tournaments on TV when a seasoned player would try to guess what an opponent has, and it will actually turn out that way. It's not a voodoo fortune-telling kind of a talent but it's a scientific skill with a lot of help from psychology and years of practice.

Basically, hand-reading is coupled with poker suggestions. For instance, we make a bet and a player almost calls sooner than expected. We don't really just watch the player's face or how the player squirms in the chair and make conclusions out of those. We should study how the player immediately called our bet or how the player threw a hand, for instance. Then we compare that with how the player played the last few games, or how the board or the flop affected the player. The facial expressions or body gestures just come in later when we have sufficiently assessed the bet patterns intelligently.

Thus, in hand-reading to beat poker players remember to be aware of betting strategies and then their possible hands, before attempting to play a little with their face and limb reactions.