Can we discuss Hand Reading at the MicroStakes

[deehi]

I was recently watching a video of Gredn Plastic playing 6max 5-10 poker. An instance came aabout in which he pitched a seemlingly good hand; AK. Regardless of whether you would fold in the situation or not is not the question, but how do you develop reads at the 10nl-50nl levels when many of the players will play ANYTHING.
It's nice to be able to put your ubertight on a range of hands like AA-QQ,or AK,but what of your little wannabe Gus Hansens' who will play any hand? How are reads made at the low limits, help is needed? I will say that at times, I "sense" that my hand is no good, or simply wont contine with a certain hand. For example, the table i played on last night to an extent were respecting my raises;because I was doing so with top teir hands. Well, I raised a pair of Tens on the button,to .70 with three limpers and the UTG reraised me to $2 dollars. So I let the hand go. I in this instance put him on a bigger pair, but this is not the norm. Let's gets some feedback.

[Gelford]

Health Warning: Emulating CR Videos can lead to serious spewing at uNL (or anywhere for that matter), when done without the necessary skill)

As for handreading ... what can I say .. it comes with experience I guess. That and thinking about hands. Not much feedback, but well ... start reviewing the others hands after each showdown and try to make sense of what they are doing.

[CaucasianAsian29]

I agree w/ gelford about those card runner vids although they are good to watch, I think the istrong vids have helped me more than anything. Istrong usually plays more of an ABC TAG game in his vids-and they are free.

As for reads, They will mostly come with practice and logging tons of hands. And you are right, reads are less important than learning ABC tag poker.

Basically with Micro stakes just know that your getting called a lot more. Don't try some giant bluff on the river cause you know your opponent has mid pair-it's likely he/she will call.

Also put opponents on a range rather than specific hand or hands, if you listen even Green plastic does this, although his range is more refined.

[lacrymosa]

[ QUOTE ]
I was recently watching a video of Gredn Plastic playing 6max 5-10 poker. An instance came aabout in which he pitched a seemlingly good hand; AK. Regardless of whether you would fold in the situation or not is not the question, but how do you develop reads at the 10nl-50nl levels when many of the players will play ANYTHING.
It's nice to be able to put your ubertight on a range of hands like AA-QQ,or AK,but what of your little wannabe Gus Hansens' who will play any hand? How are reads made at the low limits, help is needed? I will say that at times, I "sense" that my hand is no good, or simply wont contine with a certain hand. For example, the table i played on last night to an extent were respecting my raises;because I was doing so with top teir hands. Well, I raised a pair of Tens on the button,to .70 with three limpers and the UTG reraised me to $2 dollars. So I let the hand go. I in this instance put him on a bigger pair, but this is not the norm. Let's gets some feedback.

[/ QUOTE ]

GP's videos are great for mid/high stakes players. He plays too loose to be successful at micro stakes imho.

[Gelford]

[ QUOTE ]

GP's videos are great for mid/high stakes players. He plays too loose to be successful at micro stakes imho.

[/ QUOTE ]

I am not sure that this statement is true, allthough I can't speak from a position of power. I used play a very tight and nitty game, but since returning to cash I find myself playing a 28/23/2,5 kind of game and doing well at 25NL ... allthough samplesize is more or less meaningless right now, so we can talk again in some months.

But there is a big difference now from back then. I used to play very formulaic and I rarely had any idea what villian had, so it was this ABC .. lead good hands, be carefull with one pair hands etc etc kind of thing. Also my aggression was very uncontrolled and all over the place at times and often it was missing.

A whole lot of different skills that you need. Also being aware of table dynamics is also something to master.

Shifting between the style that usually comes with a 16 vpip to totally lagtard ... and back, depending on how players react and lets us face it, how your concentration is on a particular day .. I sometimes find myself not focused, reading this forum etc while playing ... and then I automatically slip into my nit outfit. (sometimes I nit four tables and lagtard two tables while six tabling, and when you are playing like this it is always fun to see you described in a post as a xx/xx/xx player, gotta love them static reads)

And finally most important I think is that, 25NL is like play money for me these days (I have played higher, but wanting to get my feet wet, this is where I have restarted). Also from sngs I have gotten used to way more brutal swings than 25NL is ever capable of delivering (+/-200$ or even more within an hour is not inconceivable when playing 22-33$ sngs), so the betsizes being max 25$ (sometimes 50$) are ... well money is not an issue.

That being said, I still advice people to play in their comfort zone as you so easily can both spew due to lack of skill, but more importantly get tilted by the action, when attemption a lag'ish style,


OK enough ranting from me ... I mostly did this for myself, thinking about the game .. writing it out while thinking and then leaving it on 2+2 for comments.

But let me end by saying that uNL'ers not having their ABC game down shouldn't be trying to do too much, God knows that Cardrunners at first cost me a lot of buyins (some six months ago or so I burned 20 buyins within a weekend attempting to emmulate GP)

[avfletch]

This concept that low stakes players will play any two cards is really unfounded. There are a few that play like this but most people are at least giving it some thought. Admittedly that thought is often incredibly wrong but they're not just going call call call ... and if they are they're not exactly hard to 'read'.

Players at these stakes play like their hands are face up most of the time. They don't all play the same way, but if you pay attention to betting patterns, show downs and how they related to the various boards you've seen you should be able to get a good read on them.

[Gelford]

[ QUOTE ]
This concept that low stakes players will play any two cards is really unfounded ....although some will play any two suited

[/ QUOTE ]


FYP


But I dunno, it seems that most people these days have a some sort of clue as to what is going on to some extent, I remember poker two years ago being somewhat easier ... times change. That being said, low limit cash is soft.

[EMc]

there is nothing that can be said in this thread that will hold any relevancy. pretty much the only way to get better at handreading is experience.

[neverforgetlol]

except this, if you raise, pre, get two callers, flop has an ace and you don't have one, gets checked through, and then one of them bets the turn pretty quickly, he has an ace.

[Archon_Wing]

"It depends"

Actualy I believe most players in uNL will play any two, however they generally don't continue unless they catch a piece of the flop. There's one group that always slowplays their big hands, and there's one group that always telegraphs them. There's always some random maniac that goes busts really fast. Finally, there's a rare rock whose VPIP is close to 0%, who's mainly there for laughs. (Don't call their pf push though) None of them are too hard to identify and are pretty transparent, or at least transluscent, after some observed hands

[deehi]

So seeing enough hands is the only means of gaining a greater awarness of what my opponent may have. As for microstakes players having a clue, you gotta be kidding. I play at the 10NL & 25nL and you'll get three to four callers of almost ANY raise. What i am noticing now is the player that calls with suited anything.

[Marshall28]

ok i think i can help a little bit here.

here are the steps of pretty much what you want to be thinking while you are in a hand ....

first thing to do is determine what likely holdings can someone have that have you beat right now ...

for example ... if you have AdJd OTB lead for 4xbb and get called by the BB. The flop is As8c3h ... the likely hands your opponent could hold that beat you are AA AK AQ A8 88 33 A3 38 ... now based on the pf play, could he have any of these hands? ... well if he didnt raise pf and jsut called your raise, we can probably rule out AA AK AQ, its also pretty unlikely he holds a 38, i think that can be ruled out also. so now the only hands we are really concerned about are a3 a8 88 and 33.

so now lets say he leads out and pots the flop. now a little knowledge about the opponent would help us out a lot here, do we know if he is the type of player that would lead at a flop with a big hand? or is he the type that likes to slowplay? most micro stakes players are not smart enough to lead out their big hands (given a few are) but in general we are not going to think this guy is doing it, though we should keep it in mind if this pot starts to get real big.

SO ...the next thing we need to do is determine what that bet exactly means. a pot sized bet OOP probably means 1 of 2 things, either he has a vulnerable hand and wants to take the pot down now, or hes got a big one and hes trying to build a big pot.

of course we cant know for sure what exactly he has, he very well could have A8 just as well as he could have A9 or even AK ... remember hand reading is not a science.

ok so the action we take here is either to raise his bet or to call (we cant just assume they have a big hand every time and fold a very decent hand in this spot like AJ -- that is unless we know this player to lead with his big hands. so if we raise what will that accomplish? it will either knock him off of the hand hes trying to protect--and we take the hand down-- or he will come back over the top of us with his monster. this is obviously a bad situation to raise because we are only building a bigger pot for his powerhouse or we are pushing out a hand we can definitely get more value from on later rounds.

ok so we just call and the turn is a 4c. making the board As 8c 3h 4c. and villain checks his hand.

our next job is to figure out what his check means. ok this is a very basic concept that should be easy to understand.... if a player open leads and makes a PSB into a pf raiser then checks the turn, it almost ALWAYS means he has a decent hand but is worried he is behind and doesnt want to build a big pot. because think about it ... OBVIOUSLY if he had something like 88 here and he knew u were strong enough to call his bet on the flop there would be no point at all to slowing down on the turn, he already knows u r going to give him action. so from here i would assume that he has some kind of a weak ace.

but in terms of hand reading, what you really need to be doing is examining the board and match it to his play, what hands could he lead pot on the flop then check the turn? maybe something like a10 a9 a7, maybe a hand like 1010. the only other option is if he does have something like 33 or 88 and hes setting up a checkraise.

now theres no way we can possibly know which of these it is, but we do need to decide on an action for the turn.

so we either need to bet the turn or check it ... so lets see, if we bet it he might re-raise w/ 88 or 33, or he might fold something like 1010 or Ax ... so clearly betting here has absolutely no value.

however, heres the great thing about checking the turn here ... by checking the turn we will be inducing a bluff on the river from most hands here we dont beat.

so we check, river is 8s. Board is now As 8c 3h 4c 8s

this is a good card for us now because its a lot less likely he doesnt have the set of 8s. so, villain leads out river for half pot, we instacall and he shows down his a6.

thats pretty much how id go through a hand and analyze the situations and make the reads.

here is one more example which helps to make it very easy of a hand i played earlier....

i had AQss in SB, 2 callers in front of me, i raised 6xbb and got 1 caller ip against me.

flop was 8dTcTd and i made a stab at the pot for about 2/3rds pot and villain called. so what hands could he have that called this flop?

he could have 10x he could have an 8, he could have j9 or 79 for straight draws, or he could have a diamond draw. --he could also have a smaller PP but thats less likely.

so right now im ahead of the straight and the diamond draw but behind the 10 and the 8.

Turn comes Qd making the board 8d 10c 10d Qd

obviously this is a terrible card... the only hands i was ahead of before, j9 and a diamond draw have now caught up... a 10 still beats me ... 79 and a smaller PP are now the only possible hands he could have called the flop with that i have beat. so based on reading the board and recognizing what hands he could have called the flop w/ i can reason out pretty well that at this point im beat. so i check, he bets about half pot and i fold. (the only othe thing id like to add here is that there is almost no way he makes this turn bet w/ something like 77 an 8 or 79 ... there are too many cards on the board now that can beat those so he cant possibly be betting them.

anyways ... those are jsut a few examples of how u can get started on the right process to thinking about hands and reading hands.

most of the time you should be IP in a raise pot vs villain, so in that situation, all you really need to do is be able to determine what a bet means (it usually means one of two things--strong bet either means a vulnerable hand or real strength)--and a weak bet usually means villain is trying to keep the pot small or hes trying to sucker you in). and the other thing you need to do is be able to analyze the flop and determine if the hand he is calling your bet, or making the bet himself with fit the possible hands that beat you.

[Thomas Arnold]

One big mistake I think people make with regards to hand reading is to assume your opponent will play the hand as you would play it, without taking their overall playing tendencies into account. If the player is a TPP or LAG, you have to narrow or widen your ranges accordingly. Tight passive nits aren't going to bet first to act on a drawy board without a decent made hand, but a LAG won't think twice about it.

Just constantly review your hands in Poker Tracker and take lots of notes how people played the various types of made or drawing hands. You should constantly be trying to put people on a hand range, even if you're not in the hand, and if you get it wrong, take note of it and you will slowly get better at it.