Is hand reading a thing of the past?
Hi,
If our goal is to play for maximum profit the, is hand reading a novel utility simply used in tough spots (ie bluff catching) or does it play a larger role in your strategy and the strategy of modern pros?
When I see instructional videos I often find that they use hand reading as a focal point for their explanation and justification of certain actions.
As a player who does try to play as close to GTO as I can, I can see how it does provide additional information that would certainly allow us to play closer, however its also an incredibly difficult and time consuming skill to employ.
Thanks.
2 Replies
I’ll try to help…
1. Boards
High cards favor raiser keep pressuring, low cards favor caller so slow down.
2. Capped Range
When villain calls it often means he doesn’t have premiums or he would have raised. Knowing this can alter your play as you can make a bet he can’t call. You should also determine if villain understands when you have capped your own range.
3. Questions
With what hands would he take this action?
With what hands would he NOT take this action? How do I match up? You can get lost in the questions, but basically try to predict his range in comparison to yours.
4. Blockers
Not a major factor but it’s like knowing he can’t have the nut flush when you have the ace, or when a card you hold means villain is less likely to complete a draw.
Tried to keep it simple
Villain narrows his range each street as hands are eliminated that he probably doesn’t have
Hand reading is important!
You’ve got to get your feet wet and keep working on it. Maybe this is enough to help get you started. You get better with practice and these and other concepts begin to make more sense. All you’re doing is making a strategic guess, but it’s an important advantage over those that are unaware.
Once you've gotten sufficiently good at GTO you'll understand just how far villains deviate from theory and how imbalanced they are. I'm mostly a live player and over time I've gotten good at "hand reading" due to imbalances in weaker players bet frequency and bet sizes. It used to be that I could read a players range and adjust accordingly but now with experience I can usually tell what a weaker players exact hole cards are on the flop or at least by the turn in NLHE. This allows you to exploit (i.e. deviate from GTO yourself) in order to maximize your EV and profits vs the imbalanced villain.
In a recent 2/5 example a weak face up villain went small bet flop, small bet turn, 125% river which is a head scratching line on BTN vs BB srp Ac5d8d flop, 2c turn, jh river until you realize he's not playing anything resembling GTO and doesn't know what a range is. He has AJo and has sized his bets according to his literal hand strength and those key metrics of fear/greed that drive poker players.
Once you adjust from GTO to this exploit hybrid strategy in live games your win rate will go up tremendously. I think that's why a lot of coaches emphasize hand reading but the GTO fundamentals have to be really solid before you get into that imo.
