Improve Your Hand Reading Ability in Poker

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7. How to Improve Your Hand Reading Ability

Hand reading is about narrowing down the range of hands an opponent is playing against you. If you can improve your hand reading ability you will improve your results at the poker table.

Here are some exercises to help improve your hand reading ability.

Importantly, You will lose your money in some of these exercises, so select lower limits. However, don't let the blind levels be so low that no one ever folds to a raise pre-flop.

1. Play a low blind, limit poker cash game and raise every hand pre-flop. This will put you in a situation where the action and play revolves around you. You will feel the power of being in charge. It will also put you in the position of having to make difficult decisions.

2. Play in a small no-limit poker tournament, and raise pre-flop once out of every three hands. Again, you will see how players respond to you. You will learn to be creative and build your hand reading skills.

3. Watch a table of limit or no-limit poker for an hour and try to identify betting patterns and put players on hands. Think about how you would have played against players, or what you would have done. This is easier to do online.

4. Do some player mapping. The next time you play in a tournament, actually write down notes about your opponents, especially their betting patterns. See if they hold true, and if it helps you to play better. Again, this is easier to do online.

As you get better at putting your opponents on hands, your poker results will also improve.

8. How To Use and Abuse the Gap Concept

You don't want to get in the habit of being a limper. Players like to see flops cheap when they have hands like suited connectors, small pairs, middle pairs, and those trouble hands like K-J and Q-J. While you want to vary your play, always think raise first. And, if you are past the middle rounds, don't even think of calling. If your hand is good enough to play, it's good enough to raise.

The advantage to being the first raiser in a hand is that you are using the Gap Concept. What is the Gap Concept?

The Gap Concept is the idea that you need a better hand to play against someone who has already raised in front of you. The thinking is that players want to avoid situations where someone has already shown strength, unless they know they have a really strong hand. It is the thinking of a player who wants to survive a tournament. But, if you play to survive, you will surely die.

Don't look to preserve your chips, look to accumulate chips. Use the Gap Concept to your advantage. If you notice players behind you folding too often to pre-flop raises, you should widen your range of starting hands and be the first to raise.

Importantly, if you notice a player in front of you raising too often, realize that this player may be using the Gap Concept to his advantage and probably doesn't need a strong hand to enter the pot first with a raise. Look to re-raise this player with calling hands. Make him fear your hand.

Counter the player using the Gap Concept with a re-raise. It will get him to fold his hand.