Hold Em Authority - Texas Hold Em Strategy and advice for all levels of players

There have been multiple times in poker where I have a perfect read on what someone is holding and I end up losing. No, I’m not talking about a bad beat here - I’m talking about not knowing your opponent as well as you need to. Let me give you an example:

You think you have an opponent pegged as being a reckless poker player. He’s in every hand preflop and ultimately just loves seeing flops. You decide that on one hand you’re going to blow him off his hand, because what are the chances he’s going to have anything worth calling a good chunk of his stack with? The cards are dealt and you have a measley J3. Of course your opponent calls preflop, and the flop comes A62. Chances are this guy isn’t going to have an ace, so this flop is gorgeous for you - you bet, and your opponent calls. The turn is a 3. You bet bigger this time, and your opponent calls. The river is a 9. He wouldn’t call you three times would he? You bet the remainder of your stack and get called fairly quickly. He flips over Q6 and sends you to the rail.

Your intuition was right - he didn’t have a strong hand. What you may have forgotten to take into consideration though was what this guy is willing to call with. He risked almost his whole stack with middle pair which is ridiculous (most of the time), but because you didn’t know he was willing to do that, he took you for all your chips. You can blame your misfortune on him being an idiot if it makes you feel better, but whose fault is it really?

Getting a read on your opponents is important, but taking your read a step further can keep you in a tournament that much longer.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 1st, 2007 at 7:06 pm and is filed under Intermediate Hold Em Strategy, Tournament Poker Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.