Reads (One newbie nerd to the rest)

[limit refugee]

I'm new to the SSNL boards, I wanna be a community member in good standing, not a belly-aching old man who drinks too much gin and looks for fights...maybe I'm out of line, maybe it's been discussed to death, but something in the hand discussions seems to be missing...alot.

Poker is not playerd in a vacuum...The way one plays an overpair on the flop against a raise kind of depends upon who you are playing against. I have been reading hands all night, and can often come up with 3 answers for many problems; raise, call, or fold.

Who am I up against? What are his stats? Has he 3 bet before? What has he gone all in on? What has he shown down? Folds to C-Bets? Tilting? You don't need to know all of these, but know something.

The posters who have been around the longest, it seems, give these inputs.

There is no reason to give a hand without reads...Datamine for 10 minutes while you drink a cup of coffee, and you can have a vague idea of who is a TAG and who is a maniac at the table. Alot of money is at stake here.

Don't want to bother? No problem, watch hands till you post and don't play anything marginal untill you get a feel for the players. We are all just learning here in SSNL, but nobody is moving up by picking up bad habits.

Know your opponent, and let everybody else know...that way we can be sure that when I give the wrong advice, smarter folks can correct me correctly.

[carnivalhobo]

good post, reads are important but a lot of times our reads arent crystal clear, maybe we only have a few hands on a guy. Or maybe we do have a read but want to know how to play the hand versus an unknown or "normal" opponent.

In short, it would be nice if we always had complete reads but lacking them we can still have a good discussion.

I try to always add in anything i think is important to teh way a hand is played and PT stats as long as i feel i have a meaningful sample 30+ hands for vpip/pfr type stats.