Morning,

I'm looking to develop and improve my player-reading abilities. I'm definitely a player who plays his opponents and tries to merge with the table dynamics but I don't use a HUD.

Primarily I like to play HUD-less because I perceive it as a bit of a crutch; people who use it seem to rely on it too much. Before anyone starts arguing with me about it, I do understand that there are good reasons for using a HUD but it's currently not for me.

Anyway, does anyone have any tips for developing reads? Any advice would be helpful, regardless of ability level. My reads are often over a smaller sample size but I generally play STT games and so far I haven't encountered the same opponents twice, so I only have their single-game statistics to work with, compiled with the notes I take on them during the games.

As I said, I observe my opponents as best I can through our games but spotting additional tells would be a great way to improve my game. Thanks in advance for the help!



tl;dr: How can I improve my reads on players (and/or their ranges) without using a HUD?

If you're talking purely about tells/behavior, the only tells I think are really applicable are bet-timing, and specifically immediate actions: immediate calls, immediate bets, immediate checks.

Were you imagining some other sorts of reads possible besides bet-timing type stuff?

I read some articles about it
You think you perfect over time
a good article about?

If you're talking about STTs, you'll be hard pressed to play long enough to get tells or reads. But usually you want to focus on those who don't defend their blinds and who limp from late position, or who fold their SB even if getting crazy good odds to call. Those folks are usually scared money. Also try to see which players are taking a lot of time due to multi-tabling, since they'll tend to play less by thinking and more by instinct.