03- 1-05, LearnTexasHoldem:

Winning At No Limit Despite Being A Bad Reader

Question: Instinct seems to be more important in NL than the cards or even position. I think that you can study Mike Caro and try and pick up some tells and I know that you can look at someone you play with a lot and see the patterns and tendencies of their game. That is all about logic, however, not an uncanny ability to look into the souls of your opponents. (Yes, that's overly dramatic, but many poker deities claim this and Doyle Brunson writes about it in his book.)

Of course a lot of times I find myself sitting at tables with new people or even worse, playing online where you're very rarely seeing the same person twice and you can't see them in person at all.

My question is two-fold:

One - Can instinct be learned? Can you, either through exercises or simply through playing a lot, learn how to get a "feel" for your opponents - even those who are pixels on a screen or someone you never met before sitting in the next seat?

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Answer: Yes, absolutely you can. You mentioned how Doyle Brunson and some of the other poker pros/authors have the ability to "look into people's souls." Now could Doyle do that his first year of playing cards? Or was it another skill that was developed over time. I'm a big nurture over nature proponent.

I don't believe much in talent. By and large, the most successful people in whatever field have a lot of experience; they were the people that stuck with it while everyone else quit. Granted in some things like sports, physicality plays a big role but that doesn't mean those people don't bust their asses too. I think calling someone talented doesn't do them justice because it suggests that their craft is easy for them.

In Doyle's case, he loves to boast how he has been playing cards and winning since FDR was in office. How good would you be if you have played that long? My guess is that you would have seen everything too and reading hands would become second nature.

Two - If we assume that it's not something you can learn, that it is a gift you are born with (and some people feel this way) can someone play winning NL poker without this gift?

Answer: With poker being on TV more, I have seen a change in games. Many of the younger players coming in think that the game is all about bluffing and being the most aggressive player at the table. No limit holdem is a game of the fewest mistakes. If you can dodge some bullets and make a few hands hold up without making an error, you do well.

Most of the time your decisions are easy. You don't see these hands on TV much though; instead you see the ones where someone made some crazy call or bet and there was drama. Most decisions, even in tournaments, are fairly straight forward. Usually if you were in tune with the information available and didn't let your emotions do the talking, you could make the right decisions.

Does that mean you'll always win though? No, because the cards don't always give you a path to win regardless of how well you play. So if all the info is there if you are perceptive enough to pick up on it, then why are some people better than others?

What sets a pro aside from an amateur is his/her ability to successfully adapt to a wider range of players. I think a better way of putting card reading is to say that it is getting inside someone's head as opposed to reading their soul. Table image is key. If you have enough experience you'll be able to think at a level above the opponent. You'll know what your opponents see your play as and also what they think you think their play is. A world class poker player is able to manipulate his/her opponents using this information. I don't think any of this is innate.

Reading hands comes purely from experience. There are two basic kinds of experience that help. The first kind is cards in general. Sometime just play some micro limit short handed poker online (maybe heads up, or threeway) and see how hard it is to actually get a good hand when only a few people get dealt in. Contrast that with what happens at a 10 person table. Pretty soon you develop a sense for how play should normally go and when an opponent starts to bet or raise out the ordinary, you notice and adjust. The second kind of experience is player experience.

After a number of years of playing cards, you will see just about every kind of person and player, aggressive, passive, slow player, religious bettor, etc. After a while what you can do is quickly get an idea of how people play. I was just playing shorthanded last night with some people I hadn't played with before and it didn't take me long before I was able to get a feel for how they all played. After that, I adjusted and won some money and left.

One of the players was playing too tight for the table, so when he did raise, I would give him more respect but if the flop came back in a way that didn't look like it helped solid hands, I might push. The other guy was ultra aggressive, even for threehanded holdem. Against him I would dump a little bit to him and then trap him for a big pot, over and over. Throughout the entire night, I had a clear idea of how both players saw my play. Was I able to tell you what they had each time? No, but that doesn't matter.

All that matters is whether or not you think you have the best hand or you can make a move to win the pot.

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