Professional poker players often rely on their skill in assesing what their rival is holding in any given hand. Your ability to do this well in your game, will in large part determine your extended success in poker. However, determining your opponent’s hole cards is one of the more intricate aspects of the game to get really good at. Here is a quick guide to get you started.
The number one rule for reading your opponent’s hand is to ALWAYS pay attention to the game, even when you aren’t in the hand. This is significant online or in live play because it isn’t just expressions or bodily tells you are observing but betting patterns too. When your challenger plays out of his normal pattern, then you must stop and ask yourself why. Frequently this means his hand is atypical too, indicating quite good, or rather poor.
Monitoring your opponent’s positional play will allow you to make solid assumptions about the potency of his hand. If he plays a lot of hole cards, his positional play won’t mean much, but if they are usually tight, solid hands from early position are the norm, loosening up to a wider range from later positions.
Always watch your opponent’s on the flop, not the board cards. Staring at the flop is often the result of his cards improving. Turning away, or a rapid check often means a potential draw or complete miss. However, if he raised preflop and aces or face cards land on the flop, be careful of a trap.
Take into account how much of a bearing the pot or betting action is going to have on his stack, or tournament hopes. If he is generally a tight player and is willing to endanger more on the hand, then you can sensibly presume he is good. If he appears wanting to keep the pot tiny, then the pot is potentially yours for just a bet. Loose players are tougher to interpret in this instance, and it’s more important for you to have a winning hand than to even bother trying to understand what their hole cards are.
Watch how the action changes according to what comes on the flop. Keep an eye on conviction that turns apprehension, or the other way around. Run through qualifying your opponent’s hand before they turn it over. Again, you don’t have to be in the hand, but you do have to examine the flop and follow the betting action. Repeating this consistently will allow your estimation of hole cards to become quite exact.
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