What is the #1 poker skill that separates professional poker players from recreational poker players? Hand reading. Hand reading is the process of assigning an opponent a range and making logical inferences about that range as the hand progresses to produce profitable decisions. Most poker players know how to hand read to some extent, especially when playing against familiar opponents. But what happens when you find yourself in a new environment with all unknown players?
Poker Hand Reading Against Unknown Opponents
All hope is not lost. I recently played on a $5/10/25 Live Stream at TCH Dallas with a table full of people I had never played with before. The game also included the stand-up game and the double-straddle which certainly widened the ranges in play and induced additional action. Looking to improve your hand reading process or just curious to see some of the highlights? Check out this video as I break down the hand reading behind the five most exciting hands that I played:
So what is the simplest way to learn how to hand read? Start by following this process:
Step 1: Start by putting your opponent on a range of possible hands based on their preflop actions.
For example, when Kenny (a loose player) opened from the hijack, I initially gave him a 30% range that looks something like this:
It can help to first think of the offsuit hands he will hold from this position and then add on the pocket pairs (as these components make up the most combinations) to create the general structure of the range. From there you can wrap the suited hands around that structure mentally to picture the shape of the range.
Once I 3-bet to $825 from the big blind, I assumed that Kenny would have re-raised his strongest hands like QQ-AA and AK and folded his weak hands like A8o and KTo. This left a calling range with mainly his medium-strength hands that I thought looked something like this:
Step 2: Reduce the range throughout the hand as your opponent takes various actions.
Sometimes, an opponent will take an action like continuation betting a small size, which he might be doing with his whole range. This does not give you much information and it is best to leave the range unchanged without additional information. But other times, your opponent will take an action that he would only do with a certain subset of hands within the range that you gave him in step 1. Once that occurs, you can start eliminating hands that logically would not take this action.
For example, when I was raised on an Ad-5h-2c board, it helps to think in terms of categories. What hand categories would my opponent raise this flop to $1300 with? Normally a medium strength hand like pocket eights would not take this action as that hand prefers to play a smaller pot. Instead, I'd assume my opponent has very strong hands like two pair (A2s or A5s), a set (22 or 55) or a straight (34s). Or potentially my opponent has a weak hand that wants me to fold. Some of these hands may have some additional outs like a pair plus gutshot (44, 33, or 54s), bottom pair (56s or 57s), a naked gutshot (46s) or potentially just a backdoor flush draw like Kd9d. Beginning to think in terms of possible categories helps to begin narrowing down the range to something more like this:
Step 3: Make the play that performs best against the categories in your opponent's range.
In this case, my opponent's range is fairly polar (consisting of strong and weak hands), so re-raising a good but non-nutted hand like AKo against the $1300 flop raise makes little sense. If my opponent was bluffing with a weak hand like Kd9d, he'll just fold to my re-raise and I'll miss out on him potentially bluffing later. If he has a very strong hand like a set or a straight, I'll lose even more money by re-raising. So calling is a better play the times my opponent is weak and chooses to bluff later, and it loses less money the times I'm already behind.
Sometimes a play that you'll make will work better regardless of whether your opponent has a strong or weak hand, as it did here with calling. But sometimes, we enter gray territory when different plays are better against different subsets of an opponent's possible range. This is where off-the-table work with combinatorics, range construction, and expected value calculations come into play and is beyond the scope of this article (but you can learn more here).
WARNING: Do NOT Do This While Hand Reading!
It's important to keep in mind that once you eliminate a hand from your opponent's range, it is gone for the rest of the hand. For example, because I assumed my opponent would 4-bet me with pocket aces preflop, I can't give him AA when he re-raises me on the flop. His preflop call eliminated that hand, and we shouldn't be re-introducing it later.
Any time you are unsure if a hand is in your opponent's range or not, it is best to discount it (reduce it's weight) rather than eliminate it entirely. So if you were against an opponent that likes to trap big hands against a 3-bet, you might have assumed he could still have 50% of the combinations of AA preflop. By leaving in the possibility when you are unsure, you are able to avoid being caught off guard later in the hand-reading process. With that said, we rarely have complete certainty, and it is better to make logical assumptions that usually apply to your player pool. We can modify them for future hands if they prove to be incorrect for a particular player.
Your Two Roles in Poker
So the next time you play poker, remember that you are both a storyteller and a detective. Each time you make a bet, you are telling a story, and you should assume your observant opponents will be hand reading to make sense of it. And when your opponents take various actions, the roles flip and you are now the detective. At your disposal is the three-step hand reading process laid out in this article. Will you be able to put the pieces together to crack the case and crush your game?
If you are looking to go deeper and refine your hand reading skills, book a free consultation here. I'll make sure you leave with valuable resources so this skill becomes second-nature for you in the big money moments when you'll need it the most.
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