About 2 months ago BigT said this in his 2500th post.
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The secret to hand reading is to actually do it. There are lots of players I know who are good hand readers but that can not do it in the amount of time they have or who only do it when they are playing their A game and really concentrating. The reality of sng's is that you are often playing your B game because of the number of tables and decisions you are forced to make. My advice to those players is to practice to the point that your A game becomes such a habit to you that it now becomes second nature for you and you do it when you are playing your B or even C game. When you subconsciously hand read you don't have to ensure that you are in fact hand reading, and the amount of time and effort that will save you is huge. Unfortunately, there is no way around it... you will have to put in a lot of work to get good at this. If you want to spend this time at cash games, go for it, or if it means playing less tables, turning off the TV when you play, or just concentrating a little more, do it. It's worth it.
So now that you know you have to practice... what exactly is it you have to practice? You have to practice putting people on a range and you have to have the ability to accurately adjust this range as soon as new information becomes available to you. This means that you also need to know what new information is and how to interpret all of it. This is a daunting task and it'll take time to get good at. It's okay though because you guys spend half the day putting people on ranges only now you're doing it with 100BB and not 10BB. I'd like to go through a hand I played the other day to take you through this example:
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While everyone remembered that thread for the [censored] storm that thread started, and the ensuing forum war, I don’t think nearly enough people learned from the advice given at the very beginning. Honestly I didn’t “get” his post until a couple of weeks ago, and I have since become a much better player, both postflop, and preflop. Once you start playing like a robot without thinking about your hands your games suffers a lot. Too give you an idea I will post I hand which MikeMcq1 posted last week.
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PokerStars Tournament, Big Blind is t50 (9 handed)
Converter on pregopoker.com
UTG (t1465)
UTG+1 (t1530)
MP1 (t1575)
MP2 (t1425)
MP3 (t1310)
CO (t1325)
Button (t2360)
Hero (t1345)
BB (t1165)
Preflop: Hero is in SB with 5[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] K[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]
<font color="gray">UTG folds</font>, <font color="gray">UTG+1 folds</font>, <font color="gray">MP1 folds</font>, <font color="gray">MP2 folds</font>, MP3 calls t50, <font color="gray">CO folds</font>, <font color="gray">Button folds</font>, Hero calls t25, BB checks
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Preflop: K5s is a decent hand we are getting 8:1 on our call. Assuming we are competent at playing postflop this should be a call.
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Flop: (t150) T[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] 6[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] K[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] (3 players)
<font color="red">Hero bets t100</font>, BB calls t100, MP3 calls t100
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Here we have two options he can bet or check.
I would check
1. Are hand isn’t very strong and is pretty vulnerable, I want to keep this pot as small as possible.
2. It gives us the ability to reevaluate and possibly fold as without putting much in the pot. Let’s say BB bets MP3 raises this is an easy fold. If BB bets MP3 call this is a fold as well.
3. You can get additional value because the limper will be betting large chunk of his limping range.
Equally important as to why you should check you should understand why betting here is bad.
1. You are bloating the pot OOP (Yes I know this is redundant)
2. You can get bluffed off the hand (combodraw, or some lagtard who thinks his ATo or K2s is the nuts here) While both these situations are somewhat rare you should keep them in mind.
3. A lot of worse hands are folding while most better hands are calling or raising.
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<font color="red">Hero bets t100</font>, BB calls t100, MP3 calls t100
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This is what happened. At this point we have no idea how strong our hand is.
Create a range for hands that limp and call bets on that flop it could be as wide as
JQ, 78,89, 79s Any two hearts, JT,QT,AT, A6 Kxs, K9,KJ, KQ
And less commonly AA, KK,TT,66, KTo, AK.
The range on the BB is even wider
With all the hands that the limper has plus T6,Kx, Maybe even Tx.
Your hand looks pretty good against the range. The problem is that there are dozens of turn cards which could improve your villains hand, and you basically have to guess if they do or don’t. You are too shallow to play a guessing game here
The pot is about 1/3rd of our stack on the turn. So we are now pretty much playing for stacks.
I’m aware people may think that I’m being results oriented because we have two callers on this flop. However any time this flop bet gets uncalled we have the best hand when he get called we will by stuck with a big pot OOP against a huge range of hands.
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Turn: (t450) A[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] (3 players)
Hero checks, BB checks, MP3 checks
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This is a pretty big scare card on the turn it fills qj’s straight, two pairs any A6,AT, and AK and it gives a pair to the nut flush draw.
Again we have two options bet or check.
Betting here serves no purposes as it won’t fold out many better hands, and it won’t induce calls from many worse hands.
This is a clear check.
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Hero checks, BB checks, MP3 checks
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This is the best outcome for us.
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River: (t450) 5[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] (3 players)
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This river card is good for us. It gives us two pair, but it also completes any flush draws.
Again we have two options on this river bet or check.
In the original thread most people said to check/call, which I think is a bad.
Consider the following
The villains in this hand are almost always betting the turn or raising the flop with two pair or set.
That means villains ranges of are the following are basically missed draws, one pair hand, made draws.
Pretty much every single draw got there except flopped gutshots.
Therefore by checking we are either hoping that villains are making thin value bets with one pair hands, or bluffing with missed draws in a multiway pot.
Although people will bet this river occasionally with those hands, but it will be infrequent.
By betting here we can control the pot, gain value from worse hands and fold to better hands.
Earlier I said that betting bloated the pot, that is not the case on the river as we don’t need to worry about future streets.
We can control bet sizing here if we bet 200-300 and fold to a raise we are only losing 200-300 chips. Compare that to facing a 400 chip river bet from on of the villains. Saving those extra 100-200 chips can be very important.
What hands can we get value from here?
In a $27 and most buyin SNG’s people will be calling this river with
Kx, Ax, T6, T5, 56,
Obviously once we bet this river we have the intention of folding to any raise.
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River: (t450) 5[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] (3 players)
<font color="red">Hero bets t250</font>, <font color="red">BB raises to t500</font>,
<font color="gray">MP3 folds</font>, Hero...
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On this river we are getting 5.8:1. We aren’t really beating anything, but we are getting insanely good odds, either calling or folding here is fine, but I would lean towards a fold, because
Minraising is often the sign of a very strong hand.
BB can have any two cards
Call, Check, Raise is a line that looks a lot like a flush.
Too many people on this forum try to treat playing postflop like pushbotting. The thing is postflop play isn’t nearly as easy. In any SNG you will run into several unexploitable plays these plays are always right. People try to create unexploitable post flop play by following the same system, when you have an overpair, pot, pot, shove. When a scare card comes c/c. When you flop tp out of the blinds bet. The thing is not every overpair, or every scare card is created equal. Your opponents, stack sizes, board texture are all relevant. When I first started watching poker on TV I remember all the pros would say, well I go over all the action in the hand and try to come to a conclusion. I would always listen to that and think you know that makes sense, but I rarely did it.
When hand reading the following should go through your head,
What is his range of hands preflop?
Given preflop what is his range of on the flop?
Given preflop and flop… etc.
I often see posts on this forum where people suggest potential hands for villains that the villain will never have. Everyone this forum should have the ability to hand read or learn how to do so. In SNG’s hand reading is basic induction a skill everyone should have. By focusing and applying this skill you will become much better.