Reading tells- a blog from a learner
04-12-2016
, 12:52 PM
Been a while since an update, since I am only trying to make them when I have something interesting to report. Still struggling to pick up tells systematically, but the effort I do make to look for them has helped me sometimes, and has also indirectly helped by keeping me better focussed on the game- especially when I am not involved in a hand.
Anyway- to last Friday.
First of all, let me be clear I played the hand terribly. So terribly that I pretty much deserved what I got. So terribly I am not going to relate many details of the actual hand or I will lose any small amount of respect I might have around here!
With that out of the way- to the tell. I was on the button, and it had folded round to me. I raised, SB called. I flopped top pair, crap kicker. Betting on the turn and flop was the same- he checked, I bet, he called. River is dealt, and suddenly he bets big.
So I am sat there mulling things over. Villain is a very experienced, low stakes player- pretty typical opponent. I know him quite well, and although gregarious by nature he normally adopts a stoic stance in this situation. However this time he interjected into someone else's conversation and chatted away with them laughing and joking. This was abnormal. Obviously he looked very comfortable and relaxed. That conveys strength. But to my mind it seemed strange that he wasn't acting normally. In fact I wondered if he was trying a little bit too hard to be funny and relaxed in his conversation. Aha! I had him. He was acting relaxed, and strong because he was weak!
You know the ending.
He made a straight on the river, and just for fun I had compounded my error by shoving instead of simply calling.
1 bad read and an early night.
What did I do wrong?
Well obviously I got my read wrong. I took a real read and (not entirely unreasonably I think) interpreted it backwards. Maybe I was trying to be too clever? Maybe he had seen me making some decent reads on players before and deliberately sent me a false tell (although I think I might be assigning him more credit than he deserves here). Or maybe he isn't always as stoic as I thought, and my baseline data was incorrect. What I certainly did was put too much faith in my reading ability and should have let a marginal holding go.
How do I learn from this in the future- well I need to watch him closely from now on- get that baseline data right. I also need to see if he adapts his game for different players. And I need to not put my tournament at risk on a read unless it's a nailed on certainty (in other words it's Kev bluffing
).
And I need to stack him next week!
Anyway- to last Friday.
First of all, let me be clear I played the hand terribly. So terribly that I pretty much deserved what I got. So terribly I am not going to relate many details of the actual hand or I will lose any small amount of respect I might have around here!
With that out of the way- to the tell. I was on the button, and it had folded round to me. I raised, SB called. I flopped top pair, crap kicker. Betting on the turn and flop was the same- he checked, I bet, he called. River is dealt, and suddenly he bets big.
So I am sat there mulling things over. Villain is a very experienced, low stakes player- pretty typical opponent. I know him quite well, and although gregarious by nature he normally adopts a stoic stance in this situation. However this time he interjected into someone else's conversation and chatted away with them laughing and joking. This was abnormal. Obviously he looked very comfortable and relaxed. That conveys strength. But to my mind it seemed strange that he wasn't acting normally. In fact I wondered if he was trying a little bit too hard to be funny and relaxed in his conversation. Aha! I had him. He was acting relaxed, and strong because he was weak!
You know the ending.
He made a straight on the river, and just for fun I had compounded my error by shoving instead of simply calling.
1 bad read and an early night.
What did I do wrong?
Well obviously I got my read wrong. I took a real read and (not entirely unreasonably I think) interpreted it backwards. Maybe I was trying to be too clever? Maybe he had seen me making some decent reads on players before and deliberately sent me a false tell (although I think I might be assigning him more credit than he deserves here). Or maybe he isn't always as stoic as I thought, and my baseline data was incorrect. What I certainly did was put too much faith in my reading ability and should have let a marginal holding go.
How do I learn from this in the future- well I need to watch him closely from now on- get that baseline data right. I also need to see if he adapts his game for different players. And I need to not put my tournament at risk on a read unless it's a nailed on certainty (in other words it's Kev bluffing
).And I need to stack him next week!
