I can read hands! (lc)

[ChipStorm]

Completely pedestrian for you good players, but to the up-and-coming ABCers I think this is worth telling...

This is from a post Isura made in Baluga's Pooh-Bah post on good LAG play:

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The reason that people want to learn LAG is because they aren't very profitable playing TAG. They aren't very profitable as TAG because they can't read hands well enough yet....

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I've always been an ABC full-ring player, i.e., Reads? What reads? From Isura's note, I'm "not very profitable as TAG" because I haven't made the effort to read hands.

But I've spent the last week trying to learn 6max. And at 6max, if you don't watch your opponents, you get chewed up. And I've spent a week getting chewed up: 3.6k hands, -5.6PTBB/100.

So I'm trying to learn to watch and take notes and buddy list (for the first time ever!), and last night the bolt of lightning struck. A villain in EP rivered a flush against my two pair, and when he showed down, he had limped 74s.

And for the first time ever, instead of thinking, "damn, rivered, oh well", I thought, "holy ****, I can KILL this guy long term, he limps suited trash from early seats! Wahoo!" And then I made a specific note on him, and thought about HOW I would kill him, and I buddy-listed him.

Now if you can read hands, you've already traveled this road. But if you're still getting down a solid ABC game of tight preflop, c-betting, learning to fold big pairs, etc., you may not have put the effort into reads. And I sympathize; it's hard enough just to assess the basic poker situation, and make a valid decision, let alone take opponent tendencies into account.

And hand reading does take effort, and a major thinking shift at the table. You have to just believe in your ABC game and almost forget it, and focus on watching people and what they do, with a mind to record that information, and with faith that it has value and you'll see these players again and you'll use that information against them. I can't overemphasize the mental shift that's involved. It's a leap.

But last night I felt like I opened a damn treasure chest.