Quote:
Originally Posted by epdog2005
I have just gotten back to lhe after ten years only playing nl. I have found my hand resting skills in game are not good. With the speed of lhe, what mix of playing vs study do you recommend? Thanks
Hand reading skills are obviously extremely important, perhaps the single most important skill to have at a poker table. I'm very much a stats guy and have always used a HUD. Everything starts with people's opening ranges which can be gauged very well from looking at RFI %'s from each position. It's important to understand your own opening ranges from each position because it'll give you a good picture of what other people are opening with.
As an example, I open 19% of my starting hands from UTG in a typical 6-max game. I know my range consists of the following hands: 55+ AT+ A2s+ K9s+ KJ+ QJ Q9s+ J9s+ T8s 97s, 87s, 76s
If I'm up against an opponent that's opening say 22% of their hands from UTG, it almost always means they are opening weaker aces, weaker kings, or weaker Q's. The suited hands don't make up much combo wise and as a result don't effect people's opening % as much. So a typical player opening 22% of their hands is going to have things like A9o, KTo, and QTo. This can be really useful information later in the hand or even preflop if you're sitting on the button with a marginal 3-betting hand like AJo.
Once I have a good picture of my opponent's opening range, it's a matter of narrowing that range down postflop through a variety of factors that include their tendencies (again I use stats for this), the board texture, and their view of my range and how I expect them to adjust their play based on this.
Probably the best general advice I can give you is make sure you always have a picture in your head of what your opponent's range is to start the hand. Narrow down that range as the hand continues. When you get to showdown, always check to see if your opponent's actual hand was part of the range you assigned. If it was, great, you probably don't need to much else. If it wasn't, you'll want to replay the hand in your head and figure out why you didn't include the hand in your assigned range.
Sometimes the reason will be as simple as your opponent made some whacky non-standard play. Other times they'll actually be a flaw in your thinking, where you overlooked something or underestimated your opponent. Either way, you now have valuable information about your opponent while improving your own hand reading skills.
The bottom line is takes lots and lots of practice to get good at hand reading. I always found I was playing my best when I was looking at all the hands that went to SD and was replaying hands in my hand. When I was playing poorly and in auto-pilot mode, I'd be too lazy to even look or take the time to think about how the hand had played out.