Pro Poker School

Hi all,

I am pretty new to the game of poker and have many areas to improve on. I think my biggest improvement recently is knowing when to lay down (not always though!) and not lose big pots when I am clearly not in front.

One area that I know needs a lot of work however is observing my opponents, analysing their game and putting them on a range of hands.

I find that when I start playing I try to follow what the others are doing but soon enough I start drifting through hands I am not involved in and missing the opportunity for that vital information. Even when I am paying attention I find it hard because I really don't know what I am looking for and its always different players involved in different pots.

The end result is that I am only really playing the cards that I hold and missing opportunities to take pots when my opponents are bluffing or weaker than they represent. Sometimes if I miss my hand I guess my opponent has nothing and bluff with the bluff resulting in a big loss when I get called.

Are there any basic guidelines I could be following when trying to analyse my opponents and put them on a range of hands? ie. in SNG should I start by focussing on a couple of opponents rather than trying to analyse all 8?

Cheers
Steve

lateseven,

You ask some good questions here. My general advice for you in regard for working on reading players is to generalize players into a few categories, extremely tight, aggressive, straightforward etc., then when you go to analyze a player, really try to put yourself in their shoes, how big is their stack compared to the blinds, did they just lose a big pot, what kind of mentality are they currently in, etc? As you play more, you will be able to understand your opponents motives and thought processes more and more and your reading of hand ranges will improve. You just need to have a general idea on a player's theories and do not need to hand pick through everyhand etc.

Hope this helps,
gank

Are you playing primarily online or live?

Online you are fairly limited to observing things like betting patterns. Try to look at the hand history and use other tools like sharkscope.com, officialpokerrankings.com, etc to do what Gank said, classify your opponents. Knowing your opponent and their range in a given situation is about the best you can hope for. Also, checkout the videos on this site. Gank and a few others give a lot of really good advice for a good range of topics/games. You mentioned SNG's, there is at least one video that i've watched on this site covering SNG strategy...check it out.

Live play there are physical tells that some people give off. There are tons of books, videos etc on that out there. You still need to know who you are playing against and what they are capable of.

In either scenario if you are getting nailed in big pots too many times then my suggestion would be to avoid big pots / big chipstacks unless you've got a monster hand. Playing small pots isn't very glamorous or exciting but it lowers your risk and if you are successful at it, increases your stack over the long run while you wait for the monsters. Hope it helps....

Thanks for the advice, every bit helps no matter how big or small.

I will focus on learning how to categorise my opponents. I'll start by watching the rest of the vids on this site, the SNG ones I have watched so far have been really good. Also I am going to start simply watching online SNG's and not play so that I can focus on observing and anaylsing players without being distracted by my play.

Do you guys know of any good doco ie. websites or books, that describe the various categories of players?

Thanks again for the time you take to help players like me, it really is greatly appreciated.

Cheers
Steve

A great read on playing styles is actually written by Phil Hellmuth in his Play Like the Pros book. He categorizes players into a bunch of different animals such as mouse, elephant etc.

Thanks propokerschool, I am going to get a copy of the book you mentioned.

To follow on from my last post, I have continued to watch the videos on this sight and thought I would mention one that I found particularly helpful from the hand analysis point of view. That video was the cash game by Auggie where he only analyses his play in two hands but particularly in the second he provides some really insightful analysis of what range of hands he puts his opponent on and why.

I also want to follow up on a part of my first post. I mentioned I find it hard to pay attention to my opponents actions and usually start to drift when I am not involved in a hands etc. I think now I know why...

I had just watched some of the videos of gank and as always he was describing the plays and his thought process but then occasionally he would point out a major play/outcome made by an opponent that he was thought worth taking mental note of. Later on as I was reflecting on the videos it dawned on me I had been trying to remember and pay attention to far too much. I was trying to remember each individual step of every hand (even trying to remember one a couple of hands later is almost impossible!) and of course a lot of it is ultimately irrelevant anyway. Trying too do the impossible and remember everything was rapidly draining my concentration and leave me with no sense of achievement causing me to give up

My new approach is watch each hand but only make note of key plays/outcomes that I am able to recognise (there are many that I don't but all in good time!). Also as per ganks advice I am trying to take a more generalised approach to putting players into categories.

At last I think I have a solid starting point, just like I have with SNG strategy thanks to the great vidoes on this sight and Bryan Micon's SNG Domination

Thanks again and good luck at the tables.

Steve

Also i think making notes on players really does help. Even if wot u notice is small, it could still help make a better decision next time u are up against that player.

I agree, making more use of the notes facilities has helped me. Just the act of making a note affirms that I am paying some sort of attention.

When I first started didn't take notes because I figured I would either get it wrong or the player would not be the same the next time. I was concerned that this would in turn lead to me making incorrect assumptions about the same player the next time I came across them.

I have since learnt that I need to rely on much more that a single note from a single session to categorise any player. If I have only a single note I am better off starting from a clean slate the next time I observe the same player. The notes become useful after a period of time when I can review them to see if there are any patterns etc.

I can't remember where I saw this piece of advice regarding notes, but someone in one of my poker books suggested dating each note entry so you had a better idea as to whether the tendency of your opponent was recent or whether it might be so old that the guy you first made the note on had since figured out how to plug his leak.

Sounds like a really good idea, suggestion noted