Expert Exploits: Developing Reads
The biggest edges in poker don’t come from perfecting GTO play. They come from exploiting your opponents’ weaknesses.
Identifying those weaknesses is no easy task, and figuring out the right adjustment once you pinpoint those leaks is even tougher.
In fact, I would say that this skill set has been my most valuable asset as a poker player.
Let’s walk through the first steps involved in becoming a master exploiter.
Spot the Leak
Before you can pounce on a vulnerability, you need to know what it is!
How you accomplish this depends on what type of poker you play. It’s a much different process online than it is at the physical poker table (aka live poker).
In either case, the key to success is being observant.
Online Review
Online, you can see hands even when your opponent mucks at showdown. You can usually save hand histories, which you can import into a database and analyze a myriad of statistics.
Stat analysis is the key online.
You can find out where your opponent overfolds, where they call too often, where they don’t bluff enough. The possibilities are endless.
Your primary limitation is how much time you have to study each opponent.
Live Poker
Live poker is much different. Any attempt to estimate statistics based on observation (without tracking) is something I’d advise against.
I can’t tell you how many sessions I’ve played online and thought, “Man, he’s really c-betting the turn a lot,” only to find out, when I checked the actual stats, that I was completely wrong.
Our minds play tricks on us.
They remember the times we were faced with an action that we didn’t want to face. They remember actions that frustrated us, and they amplify them.
What’s worse is that these stat estimates will be over small samples, and we don’t get enough corroborating evidence to reach conclusions we can trust.
Did he check-raise the flop three times recently because he’s bluffing a lot? Or did he simply run hot?
Or maybe he ran hot, and he is check-raising too many value hands! Jumping to conclusions is a great way to make terrible (expensive) adjustments.
If we can’t trust our perception of their frequencies, what can we rely on?
You guessed it: Showdowns.
There’s no evidence more reliable than seeing your opponent’s cards at showdown. There’s no guessing – you know exactly how they played those cards on that board. And, in time, you’ll learn how they play other hands.
Did they miss a few obvious bluffs in a row? Did they value bet way too thinly? Did they use a nonsensical bet size for their hand?
There’s so much you can learn from showdowns.
Behavior
Last but not least, you can pay attention to the way a player speaks and acts.
Plenty of players, even good players, love to talk poker at the poker table. When someone checks back a good hand on the river and says, “I just thought you were going to check-raise again,” or, “I was scared of that ace,” that’s insight into how they think!
You can also often see how easy a decision is for certain players.
Maybe they tank-call river with a hand that’s an obvious call, indicating that they’re likely overfolding that spot.
Maybe they think for a long time before finally checking back top pair good kicker, indicating that they thought it was close between a value bet and a check.
Looking beyond the way they played their hand is key. You’re trying to figure out how they play and how they think.
Especially at live poker, you won’t play enough hands that you’ll have strong reads on an opponent in every spot, but once you know how they think in certain situations, you can extrapolate and make some pretty good guesses about how they think through others.
Play, Thoughts, Emotions
As humans, we’re driven by our thoughts and emotions.
Thoughts may be comprised of what we’ve learned from studying, watching training videos, talking with friends, and playing the game.
Emotions tend to be more innate, specific to each person.
When I’m speaking about emotions, what I really mean is a player’s emotional drivers.
Our minds play tricks on us. They remember actions
that frustrated us, and they amplify them.
In all of gambling, there’s the excitement of the win and the fear of the loss.
The scale to which someone is driven by each of these varies from person to person. In poker, it can get even more specific.
Some players are terrified to bluff, while for others, there’s nothing they love more than winning a pot they “didn’t deserve” to win.
Some players, once a pot gets big, they try as hard as they can to win it. Others mainly bluff at small pots and shy away from the more expensive bluffs.
Some players are afraid to bluff but happy to call down light.
This, by the way, was my natural state before working very hard on overcoming it. I was more interested in outsmarting an aggressive player than running over a nitty player.
The point is, everyone has different emotions coloring the way they make decisions at the table.
Don’t just limit your profiling of them to basic strategy weaknesses. Build a psychological profile! Really try to figure out what each player thinks and feels.
Supporting Evidence
Once you have some theories about an opponent, see if you can back them up, not only with more examples of your precise read, but with evidence elsewhere that might support it.
Here’s an example:
Let’s say that you think someone doesn’t c-bet bluff turns often enough.
Every time you see a showdown where they bet the turn and had a value hand, that’s evidence in support of your theory. Every time you see a showdown after they bet the turn with a bluff is strong evidence against it.
But this is the obvious, level 1 evidence. Let’s go a step deeper.
Let’s say that the player raises out of position, bets flop, and checks turn. When they face a bet, they quickly fold.
Well, that was likely a hand that they could’ve bluffed! So that check-fold supports your theory.
Looking beyond the way they
played their hand is key.
On the other hand, let’s say that you see them check-call turn in that same spot, and then show down a slowplayed hand. This isn’t evidence that they will bluff turn, but might you be able to remove some value hands from their turn betting range?
If someone misses 20% of bluffs and 20% of value bets, their range is still going to be roughly balanced (the exact math depends on bet size, among other things).
You have to look not only at the exact situation you’ve made a read on, but at the lines that correspond with it.
If someone misses turn bluffs, their betting range gets stronger and their checking range gets weaker.
This is how you would approach it online as well.
Let’s say that we have the exact same read. If the turn c-bet percentage is lower than normal, that’s evidence that he’s missing bets with some hands – probably bluffs, like you suspect.
After he checks turn, does he fold to a turn or river bet often? If so, that’s more corroborating evidence.
After he bets turn, does he bet river often? Does he call river often after betting turn and checking river? More corroboration!
Where to Go Next
Whether you’re studying your opponents’ stats online or making showdown-based reads at the live poker table, you need to keep track of them.
It may feel like you understand all the reads you’re making at the moment while you’re observing things, but you’re going to forget!
Take notes.
Take notes on your computer, on your phone, or in a notebook for all I care. Just take notes!
Once you’ve got some well-developed reads, the magic begins.
