Wildhorse Casino in Pendleton

This past weekend I played in several tournaments at Wild Horse Casino in Pendleton, Oregon. I played a $200, a $300, and a $500 buy-in. I had some pretty bad luck, but I also did some stupid stuff that probably contributed to my lousy showing. For one thing, I had scheduled a 30-minute phone interview right in the middle of the $200 tournament, which caused me to be blinded and anted down from above an average stack to significantly below one. I should have just postponed the interview, which I could have done, but I don’t like to cancel on people when the scheduling is my fault. So that contributed to me not doing well in that one and also threw my mood off a bit for the $300 tournament the next day.

There was one very interesting hand from a poker tells perspective, where my read on an opponent helped me survive getting a full house beaten.

This hand is from the $500 tourney I played on Saturday in Pendleton. There were 350 players. At this point in the tourney blinds were at 200-400 and antes were 50. The table was super-loose, probably the loosest MTT table I’ve ever played at. There were two guys at the table who had randomly and luckily accumulated large stacks and were getting in every pot. Because of this dynamic, there wasn’t much room for playing unless you had a strong hand. I had stayed out of most pots because I was card dead.

The one player I really wanted to get into a pot with was one of these super-loose guys who was calling large raises pre-flop and putting in a lot of chips, either calling or betting, with marginal hands. He was wearing a Yankee cap so I’ll call him Yankee. He was probably 40.

Here’s an example of how bad he was playing: in one hand, when the blinds were only 150-300, he managed to lose something like 18K to an older Asian lady who was clearly betting a very strong hand. She raised pre-flop large, he called. The flop was 668 or something, she bet like 10K and he went all-in. She called and he had 77 and she had QQ. So this should give you an example of why I wanted to get a hand against this guy.

Despite this massive chip loss, Yankee guy was still sitting pretty healthy when our hand went down, probably around 20K or so. I had about 13K at this point in time.

Okay, so blinds are 200-400 with a 50 ante. So the pot is 1000 at this point. I get 66 in the hijack and it’s been folded around to me. Yankee is two seats behind me, on the button. I make it 1300. I make this raise a little larger than 3x here because I’ve noticed that Yankee will fold to larger than 3x the blind but usually calls super-wide with anything less than 3x, and I’d be quite happy getting through him and taking the pot at this point.

Yankee calls, and so does the big blind, who is the other super-loose player at the table. So this is a dream come true for me if I can flop my set, which is pretty much the only way I’m putting any more money in this pot.

Flop comes AJ6, with the Ace and 6 being clubs. So I hit my set, which is nice, and I’m knowing I’m going to get action from one of these guys. I bet about 1500, hoping it looks to Yankee like a “I missed but have to continuation bet” kind of bet. He raises to about 4K. Big blind folds.

Now at this point, with only about 7K behind if I were to call his raise, most people would just shove it in, and that wouldn’t be a bad play. Call me greedy, though, but I wanted to double up through him. I knew that if he just had a single A or J and was raising me, which was possible, if I shoved, he was just going to fold. Some people might say to shove to shut out the flush draw, but if he has a flush draw, he’s calling me anyway, I had no doubt. So I decided to just call, because I felt quite sure that he’d put more money in on the turn if I showed weakness here, and I wanted to make sure I got it all in, which I felt quite confident I could do with this guy. Against a better player I’d shove, because my call would be more worrying to a good player than a raise, but this guy was not good.

So I call. The turn is another Jack, making it AJ6J. At this point I was prepared to get it all in. I check, and here’s the interesting part: he checks immediately behind me. 

An immediate check in this situation, with the history of this hand, is extremely worrying. Let’s break down the kinds of hands he would do this with. Let’s say he has a decent Ace in this spot, after I’ve shown weakness calling and checking the turn, he has to at least consider for a few seconds the possibility of betting this turn. At least consider it, even if he decides to play it safe and check. Same if he just has a Jack; with trips, he’s going to consider a value-bet there for a few seconds, even if he does decide to play it safe and check. And finally, same with a flush draw bluff; if he was semi-bluffing the flop with a flush draw, he’s going to consider the chances of being able to get me off the hand by betting the turn.

Virtually the only hand that he (or most people) would check behind immediately here is AJ. In my book I write that an immediate bet, call, or check can be very polarizing, meaning that they’re going to have either a weak, vulnerable hand or extremely strong hands. One of the things I’ve started noticing more lately is how this dynamic is especially meaningful depending on who the aggressor is. It’s not something I wrote about in the book, but it’s something I’ve put more thought into lately. Basically, an immediate check behind wouldn’t mean much in this spot if I had been the aggressor and he had just been the flop caller. But in this spot, because he was the aggressor, and would be expected, as the aggressor, to be thinking about either getting value or making a bluff, his check behind is extremely polarizing and, I think, extremely weighted in the strong range.

At the same time,  he’s such a weird, bad player, I can’t be completely sure of this read, and he could be playing a flush draw like this, and could just be happy to get a free card and be checking behind because he’s given up on the hand unless he gets his flush.

The river is a low blank. Because his hand is weighted to either a better full house or a missed flush draw, my only play is to check to him. He bets about 5K almost immediately. As much as I think it’s probable he has AJ, he’s just so bad I can’t fold the hand. So I call and he shows the AJ and I show my full house. I technically never advocate showing a strong hand played weakly, or advocate giving information in general, but in this case, I was left crippled, with only about 2.5K, and I figured showing the hand was good promotion for when I gave my book away when I left the table. Showing I can read hands and all.

People were impressed I didn’t go broke on the hand, and the guy was like “wish I had bet a couple grand more, lol”.  Then I started wondering if I could have folded the river. If my read was that good. And it’s possible I could have against a more predictable player, but this guy was just so off his rocker, and anyway, it’s hard for me to imagine any player in this situation where I could fold that river that shallow. But the immediate check-behind at least made me cautious and at least led to my survival.

I ended up getting my little stack in good a couple times and running my stack up to 17K at its highest. Then I was anted and blinded down to about 11K. You can read about my bust-out hand in this post I made on 2+2 about it. I had a few other interesting hands from the Pendleton trip, which I might post later.

The post $500 Pendleton tournament – Immediate check-behind from aggressor raises red flags appeared first on Reading Poker Tells.

I won’t exaggerate my tournament experience; I have been mainly a cash game player and I’ve only played about 40 live multi-table tournaments, although my results are good and lately I’ve felt very confident in these events. I am of course aware that this is a very small sample size. To offset my far-from-proven MTT track record a bit, I’m not charging the 10-20% mark-up that more proven people charge on selling tournament pieces. I’m charging no mark-up, so a piece is a piece.

What else? I’m going to playing in a few tourneys this weekend; $200, $300, and $500 tourneys in Pendleton, Oregon. Apparently they get good turnouts there.

In preparation for the WSOP events, I’m also going to be playing some MTTs online, which I’ve never done, and reading more 2+2 forum strategy talk. I’ll try to post some questions on 2+2 about any interesting or troublesome hands I have in the next few tournaments I play.

The post Quitting job, WSOP tournaments, other stuff appeared first on Reading Poker Tells.

Regarding your book, I wanted to email you to share some thoughts I had regarding what I liked and some tells that I have found in my poker career. My name is Danny Steinberg. I am 24 years old, and formerly a professional poker player who now works for xxxxxxxx as a xxxxxxxxxx. I was a very accomplished high stakes online cash game player under the screen names Mirttinur on Full Tilt and heybude on Pokerstars. However, I always felt that live was my best game, precisely because I felt like I was good at reading peoples tells or cues or whatever you want to call them. My best live tournament finish was 6th at the 2010 WSOPE Main Event. I also have a twin brother who won a World Series bracelet this year.

However, I did use bet sizing, game flow, and timing tells a lot online. There is definitely a lot of information to digest in whether a player is winning or losing, whether they just won or lost a big pot, how quickly or slowly they bet, and how that relates to how fast or slow they bet.

My response: Yeah, this is a lot of the stuff I look for to help sway decisions. Lot of times I initially think “oh, his range is xxxx” but after thinking about it later, I’m like “he wouldn’t have bet fast with some of those hands, so really his range was xxxx”.

After reading the first few chapters, I knew I’d really like the book. One of my favorite parts is when you talk about your belief that if you had all the information and ability to process that information well you could know someone’s exact cards or close to it. This was something I always attributed to my success in poker in a slightly different manner; I thought that an incredibly elite level of play was possible, and because of that I was always searching how to achieve it, never accepting that incorrect poker plays were impossible to avoid. That’s why I always liked live poker better than online even though most of my money came from online. With live, there is an entirely new and important set of information you are given that can be a vehicle to destroy your opponents even more than possible online.

My response: Totally agree. I question my play incessantly and I think this is the only key to becoming an elite player. I am always looking for things that could have swayed my decision differently. Whether its mathematics or tells. It honestly stresses me out, because I almost never feel like I’ve played near the top of my abilities. In hands where most players wouldn’t question whether they made a mistake, I am thinking ‘what info was there that I could have used to play that better?’ Although I don’t consider myself anywhere near an elite player, I think this is the mindset you have to have to get there. Too many people stop questioning their play, even the people who really suck. But it holds true for very good players too.

I think it’s nice of you to include a lot of references to Caro’s book of tells, but I have to say I think you’re book blows it away. I think the approach you take, a more conceptual approach to understanding the actions of an individual, instead of a laundry list of this = strong and that = weak makes this book much more useful than Caro’s.

You talk about how important context is in the book, that different actions can mean different things depending on the situation. I find that big pots vs small pots that you have mentioned briefly is really huge. I find that everything flips conceptually in small pots in regards to relaxed vs emotionally intense behavior.  In small pots, when someone seems very relaxed, as when they open preflop, 3bet or 4bet, or check/bet the flop, it tends to correlate strongly with weak holdings. It makes perfect sense, as there’s really not much to worry about if someone calls or raises your bets when you have so little to lose. On the other hand, emotional intensity in small pots tends to signal that a person already knows that he is going to get involved in a big pot and naturally has some worry of being sucked out or having to put all his chips in the middle when its all said and done.

One of my favorite tells , although it is incredibly subtle, is the speed of the check. This falls under the strange behavior category, but I’ve noticed insta checks or checks that take a little long tend to be strong where as people tend to have a 1.5-3 second pace when they check with a weak holding.

You mention a tell in the book regarding when people look at their cards for a very short period of time and immediately put them down their holding tends to be strong. I’ve seen this as well. One different flavor of this I’ve seen is when people look at their cards but hold them up high when they lift them. This seems to be weak. I think it’s a similar concept to staring at the board after the flop, the player looks at his hand with the largest view possible because they want to make sure that their 85o is really not AK. It also may be similar to an instinct to protect your treasure. When a player has AA, they want to hide it, bring it closer to them, almost make sure no one sees or steal it from them. With a bad holding its more similar to using a metal detector on the beach, finding someone worthless, and tossing it back on the ground.

My response: You could be right. Although I’ve found when I’m playing heads-up with someone across the table, and there’s hardly anyone else at the table, that some people tend to lift their cards up high when they are strong in later stages of a hand, almost as if so relaxed that they just don’t care. But that’s usually really amateur players; don’t see it too often; most people aren’t doing that. But what you said holds true for initial pre-flop looks I think.

 Another tell you mention is when a player stares at you or talks to you (or more confrontational in general) they tend to be strong. You say something along the lines that this is probably because people have a desire to crush their opponents, and when they do have the means, they want to show them they are going crush you. It’s kind of like a little kid who gets beat up regularly by the bully at school. When he gets his hand on some weapon that could give him an advantage, he’s going to want to show him it and feel powerful, not hide it. Maybe not the perfect analogy but you probably get what I mean. Anyways, I have another factor to add to this. I’ve found that this tends to be true mostly for people I refer to as “meek” characters. This is basically most people at the poker tables, somewhat shy, not incredibly outgoing, not brimming with confidence.

However, I’ve noticed with the more gregarious characters, the ones who are talking to friends, chatting up the table, showing arrogance, the ones who seem similar to the popular guy who picks up woman at clubs and goes out regularly, the tables flip. I’ve found these people love to talk, stare, and be confrontational when they are bluffing but act more quiet, unassuming, and more reserved when they actually have a hand. I’m not sure why exactly this happens, it may be because these people know how to fake confidence and are used to using it in their lives to get ahead, so they use it at the poker table as well. It does take a lot of balls to try to fake confidence at the table so maybe they got some satisfaction from that as well.

My response: This is a really interesting theory and I will think about it. It might help explain why you see the different tendencies. That’s a pretty cool theory you’ve got and does make a lot of sense on an initial read.

The post Guest blog post from poker player Daniel Steinberg appeared first on Reading Poker Tells.

He wrote:

Most of the book was making a lot of sense, but I ran into some questions in the ‘Speed of Calling’ section under “During-Action Tells.”  The second sentence of the second paragraph says:    “An immediate call will usually eliminate hands like 2-pair or top pair, good kicker from their range.”

However, the next paragraph says, “In my experience, an immediate call is … something where the value is obviously apparent. Or else it’s a hand like top pair, good kicker…”  While I understand there are no absolutes, the two statements appear to be in complete opposition. Does an immediate call “eliminate hands like 2-pair or top pair, good kicker,” or instead /indicate/ that “it’s a hand like top pair, good kicker?”

It’s fitting that he picked out this section as being bad. Out of the entire book, this chapter was the one that I struggled with the most. I even rewrote this section a few months after publishing and republished the book, because I wasn’t happy with it. I think I must have introduced some errors in it when I rewrote it. It’s obviously still got problems and I should have spent more time on it. 

Keep in mind in this section I’m talking about calls that happen immediately, as in a second or less. Very fast. If I could rewrite this section now, after having time to think about it more, I would rephrase it to sound more like the following paragraph:

When someone calls a bet immediately, it tells you that they have ruled out raising or folding almost immediately. This is the main thing to be considered. When most people have a hand that could be worth a raise they are going to spend time thinking about whether they should raise it, even if it’s a close decision. While occasionally a player (usually a good one) will just call immediately with a very strong hand, it is not a very common occurrence. So when someone calls a bet immediately, I usually think that it is likely the player has a medium-to-decent strength hand or he’s got a draw that has obvious strength.

The example pointed out in the email, regarding when a player might have top pair, good kicker, was badly mis-stated. What I was trying to say, but didn’t do, was that a strong hand or a weak hand varies based on what’s on the board. In some cases, depending on the board, top pair good kicker could be considered a very strong hand that deserves at least some consideration for a raise. In other cases, top pair good kicker is of medium strength and not worth thinking about a raise.

For example, if the flop comes AT2 rainbow and your opponent holds AK, he would be unlikely to call immediately, because his hand is very strong for the situation. Or at least it is imaginable that most players would think about a raise in that spot. 

On the other hand, if the flop comes 259 rainbow, and your opponent has A9, that could very well be a hand that someone would immediately call with, because it’s easily imaginable that’d be a hand they’d auto-call with but not consider raising with. 

Main point, though, is that if the opponent had a set or 2-pair on either of those boards, it’s unlikely they’d call immediately.

As I’ve said in earlier blogs and I think I talked a bit about in the book, this behavior will be influenced by a few things:

• How quickly the player’s call is to when the new card(s) came out 
• How significant the bet is (for example, an immediate call on a significant turn bet lets you narrow a range down more substantially than an immediate bet on a small flop bet) 
• The texture of the board (for example, on a wet suited flop, there are more drawing hands that could be considered worthy of an obvious, immediate call but not a raise)
• How aggressive the bettor is perceived by the player (for instance, a player is more likely to call immediately with a wider range if he is playing against someone who he perceives as loose and aggressive) 

For my blog post that goes into more detail on these topics, click here.

Thanks, David, for pointing this out. I very much appreciate hearing criticisms because it makes me think more critically about the subject.

The post Immediate calls – a badly written chapter of my book appeared first on Reading Poker Tells.

Of course it helps to have gotten above average cards and to have a really weak player field. I got a good-size stack early thanks to some straight-up gifts from spew-y players and I maintained a strong stack for the entire tournament. There were literally only two players that I encountered who I felt were a threat at all, and I didn’t get into many hands with them.

As for poker tells (as that’s what this blog is about), there weren’t a whole lot of spots they came into play for me, although the few times they did, they helped sway some important decisions. Although I saw a lot of tells when I wasn’t in hands, I’d say there were maybe 6 spots in total where a tell changed my decision. I’ll talk about a few of them.

The most mundane spots were probably two times where I raised pre-flop and got heads-up and my opponent was giving me some rather obvious defensive chip handling/staring tells that indicated that I needed to follow up my c-bet and bet the turn, whereas with the lack of that behavior I would have checked. That happened maybe twice. Those two players were super weak, tight players, though, so nothing too impressive about that.

Most of the important tells came into play when we got to the final table, specifically the final 6 people or so, as the blinds were getting high and we all had approximately equal chip stacks. We were just trading chips around, with people making late position raises and taking down the pot uncontested. Hardly any flops. Nobody was getting too crazy with 3-bets; when someone occasionally 3-bet or shipped it, I read them for having strong hands. So I was looking for well-timed spots to re-steal a blind raise.

I’ll talk more about bet-timing tells in another post, because I have some new thoughts on the length of time it takes someone to raise pre-flop in an end-game tourney situation. But with a couple players who were unbalanced with their bet-timing, they were betting more immediately when they were raising weak and taking several seconds to raise when they had an actual hand. I only had a couple data points for this, because it was hard to collect much data because there were no hands getting shown down. But it does make sense that when someone’s in a good blind-stealing position and they are aware of this, they are going to be ready to bet more quickly, whereas when they look down at a premium hand, they may be more likely to appear to mull over the decision. It’s the classic weak-means-strong, but applied to bet-timing. And that’s not to say this is an exact science, at all; I’m just talking general tendencies that have some amount of significance, that can help you sway these borderline decisions that you have to make at some point or another anyway.

So, for example, when I’m in the big blind and a decent guy in late position raises, and he does so fairly quickly, then, if I feel like my image is fairly solid (meaning not too many raises or 3-bets lately), then I am more likely to put in a hefty 3-bet in that spot. I am just letting this information dictate when I 3-bet, because obviously I should be doing this sometimes anyway, in the absence of any behavioral information, but if I can get one more meaningful data point to base my actions on, that’s great.

So I did maybe three hefty (around a third of my stack) 3-bet bluffs or semi-bluffs at the final table based on behavioral stuff (with a few more just from pure strategic need).

Another interesting behavior I based a 3-bet on was a decent woman player who I noticed smiling slightly a couple of times when she seemed to be blind-stealing. I couldn’t be certain because I hadn’t seen any of her hands shown down, but the fact that she was smiling slightly in a few spots and not smiling in others, and the fact that I sometimes see the slight-smile tell meaning weakness, made me feel pretty comfortable using that info to throw in a 3-bet.

During the final table, I felt like I was using all of the information available to me the best I could. And I still felt like I was only absorbing a fraction of the information I could have been absorbing. I had been playing for three long days straight at that point (two days tournament and one day cash), so I wasn’t at my full observational powers. But I was still really happy with how it went down and have no regrets about any of it (well, with the exception of one hand where I made a dumb river value-bet that I should have thought twice about.)

The post Got third in a fairly big tournament: thoughts on poker tells appeared first on Reading Poker Tells.

I wanted to add a couple factors that affect an immediate call.

One factor is stack size in relation to the pot. My last post about snap-calling a turn bet was assuming that stacks were substantial in relation to the pot. In other words, that both players have big enough stacks after the bet/call of the turn bet to make at least a pot-size bet. If this were not true—for example, if the player facing the turn bet only had enough money to cover the turn bet—then they are going to be capable of snap-calling the turn bet with a much wider range of hands. This is simply because the betting is effectively over. If they have a hand that is worth calling with at this point, then it is more likely they have made that decision quickly. There are no big river decisions to be made or implied odds to think about. So a smaller stack size for an opponent facing a turn bet will lead to a wider range of hands he snap-calls with. (Not to mention that we don’t really care about tells at this point because the hand is effectively over.)

Another factor is the perceived image of the bettor. A bettor that is perceived as aggressive by his opponent will be snap-called more often, while a bettor with a more nitty image will not be. This might be fairly obvious but just in case, I’ll spell it out. A player who is perceived as very tight (nitty) will be given more respect for a strong hand when they make a decent-sized turn bet; an opponent will have more reason to consider whether a call is worthwhile. A player perceived as very aggro (aggressive) will be called down with more hands; because an opponent will call down with more hands, more of those hands will be easier, “snap” decisions.

There is also a third sub-factor related to image. If a player is perceived as very aggressive, an opponent facing a bet can also snap-call for diverse psychological reasons. For example, an opponent who is especially fed up with an aggressive player might snap-call in an ostentatious way, almost as if to say “I’m not scared of you and am calling you down without  much decision.” Depending on how tilted such a player is by their opponent’s aggression, they might call the river bet without much thought, or they might reconsider and fold to a river bet. But their immediate call of a large turn bet is usually going to be very meaningful and would indicate to me (as I elaborate on in my last post) a decent but vulnerable hand or a draw but seldom a strong hand. (If you were the bettor in such a hand and you think your opponent has snap-called you on the turn out of frustration with your aggression or history, knowing how likely they are to call a big river bet in such a situation would obviously be great to know, whether you were bluffing or value-betting. That’s where the value of understanding your opponents’ tendencies and psychological state really come into play.)

To sum up the last few posts, the factors in a snap call of a significant turn bet (and probably some other significant non-final calls, too) are:

• Time that has passed since new card(s) arrived: the more time that has passed, the less reliable an immediate call will be
• Strength of hand: players will not often immediately call with a strong made hand because they would be more likely to consider a raise
• Stack size: Players are more likely to snap-call the less deep they are
• Perceived aggression level of bettor: players are more likely to immediately call an aggressive player than a tight player

The post More on immediate calls (snap-calls) in No Limit Hold’em appeared first on Reading Poker Tells.

In my book Reading Poker Tells, I basically say that (while there is obviously a lot of variation) snap-calls can tell us a lot because it means an opponent has ruled out raising as an option and they have done so almost immediately. This can eliminate a lot of hands from a player’s range. For instance, on a dry board, a player with a set who is facing a substantial bet is usually going to consider for a few moments how to extract max value. Some players (usually experienced ones) are capable of snap-calling with monster hands, but it is far from the norm. (Snap calls in general are just far from the norm.)

What this means in practice is that a snap-call of a substantial bet (and I usually always consider substantial bets when talking about tells) indicates vulnerability. Now this could be vulnerability for a number of reasons. In the last post, I talked about how it could indicate a strong draw (and often does). But it could also indicate a vulnerable one-pair type hand (top pair or an overpair) that is obviously strong enough for a call but not strong enough for a raise.

Also, an immediate call is more meaningful the closer it is in time to the card(s) coming out. For example, the most meaningful snap call would be one in which you are first to act, the turn comes out, you bet immediately, and your opponent snap calls immediately. This is much more meaningful than if your opponent was first to act, checked to you, you took a few seconds to bet, and he snap-called. The less time there’s been to consider how a new card changes things, the more meaningful a snap-call can be.

In the following discussion, let’s imagine that the first scenario above is the case, just so we are studying the most extreme situation. So in the following discussion about snap-calls, let’s pretend that you were first to act, the turn card came, you bet immediately, and your opponent snap-called your bet.

Let’s also imagine, for the sake of this argument, that we are talking about a significant turn-bet, because behaviors associated with insignificant bets don’t mean as much.

Finally, let’s also imagine for the sake of the following arguments, that a player isn’t snap-calling with a super-strong hand. I am quite confident a snap-call with a nut-type hand is pretty rare, so I think it’s a fair simplification.

So here’s what I came up with last night. I started thinking about how important board texture is to these spots. Board texture is obviously huge in all decisions, and this is no different. I also started thinking about how high or low the board is, and how that affects things. Here was how I broke down the likelihood of a snap-call being certain hand strengths in these different turn scenarios.

On high boards that are not draw-heavy (for example, K942), a snap-call of a significant turn bet is more likely to be a top-pair-type hand. Why is that? If a player has a hand like KJ or KQ, he is capable of snap calling this bet. Because the board is high and the pair is high, there is not much possibility of an opponent having a better pair. It is a hand that is “obviously” (at least for many players) worth a call; not weak enough to fold, not strong enough to raise. There aren’t too many hands in a player’s range that can snap-call these types of boards.

But on lower dry (non-draw-y) boards, this is no longer true. Let’s take a board like 2257 rainbow; if a player snap-calls a turn-bet on this board, what does that tell us? If he has a hand that he can play with (and again, we’re not considering sets in this discussion), it is most likely an overpair. How many of those hands will a typical player be likely to snap-call with? With most of his medium pairs he is probably likely to consider, at least for a few moments, the possibility that his opponent has a higher pair. A snap call can happen with QQ+, but for the high pair hands you could also argue that this opponent would also be thinking about raising, and probably would have raised at some point already. All of this means that snap-calls with single-pair hands on low boards is much more unlikely than on high boards. (Of course there are some looser players, especially at the lower limits, who are capable of snap-calling big bets with a medium overpair here; if you are facing such a player, you would need to take that into account. But I think most semi-decent players would not snap-call that.)

The logic thus-far goes:

On high boards, snap-calls are likely to be top-pair-type hands. Snap-calls on low, non-drawing boards are much more rare.

So let’s add to that, taking into account the board’s dryness/wetness (the likelihood of draws).

Let’s use the low 2267 board again, except this time there are two hearts on the flop. If a player is going to call a substantial turn bet here, what is his range now? It is still a lot of overpairs, but now we have to add a lot of heart draws. What in his range might a player snap-call with here? We’ve already said that snap-calls on a low board are fairly rare. I would therefore argue that the chances of him snap-calling with a good heart draw is much higher than him snap-calling with a single-pair hand. This is because almost any flush draw will also have overcards, adding a lot of value to a drawing hand. For an extreme example, a typical player who would debate for a few seconds calling a turn bet with TT in this spot would throw his chips in quickly with AK of hearts.

On a high board that is wet (draw-y), I think things are more complicated, depending on specific texture, but I will say that I think it’s still more likely that a snap-call will mean a vulnerable top-pair type hand. On a board like A936ss, a player who snap-calls will usually be snap-calling with an Ace, and not a draw. Because it is a draw without potential overcard outs, it requires at least a little deliberation for most players, in most cases. On a board like QJ56ss, this doesn’t hold as true, because we could easily imagine a player snap-calling with the A-high flush. But I still think the general concept is true, just not nearly as strong for the other categories.

So, in short, my rough theorem, when put into practical terms, (it’s a work in progress, so be gentle) comes out as:

1) On wet, low boards, a snap-call of a significant turn bet is more likely to be a strong draw. (There will still be pairs in a snap-calling range but in my opinion the likelihood of a draw goes up on this kind of board.)

2) On high boards, a snap-call of a significant turn bet is more likely to be top-pair-good-kicker-type hands.

This is a work-in-progress, so love to hear any thoughts on the subject.

P.S. – This is totally avoiding much more complicated situations at this point, like three-to-a-flush and four-to-a-straight boards. Might talk about those later.

P.P.S. – Some interesting comments and responses below.

The post A Snap-Call Theory appeared first on Reading Poker Tells.

I’d been playing this $2-5 for a couple hours. I’d been fairly active pre-flop, making a good number of raises and continuation bets, but not being too active on the turn or river, although I sensed that my opponent in this hand thought of me as mostly full of shit (just my general sense from his demeanor). He had not been active hardly at all, and I viewed him as quite nitty, just waiting for a hand. Only hands I’d seen him show down were small pots where he had decent strength hands that seemed like he should have put more money in.

I raise to $20 in late position with Q5 clubs. My opponent is in the BB and he calls, and it’s just us.

Flop is 8h 3s 4h.

Opponent checks and I bet $30. He calls pretty quickly. I think he can have anything from 89s-A8os, 99-JJ, and any decent hearts, unlikely much worse than that.

Turn is a 6s, giving me an open-ended straight draw. After a few seconds, he checks. Considering this guy’s range and just how nitty he’s been playing, I think he will fold most of his range, so a bet is definitely in order. I bet $80. He calls immediately.

The river comes another 3, making it:

Flop is 8h 3s 4h 6s 3c

Because of his turn call, I start thinking that a decent pair (99-QQ) is most likely hand for him. Maybe even an 8x that he has decided he is not folding to me just because of the image he has of me. If it wasn’t for my perception of how he viewed me, I probably would have bet, thinking he would fold a lot of better hands. But I check and he turns over KQ of hearts and takes the pot with KQ high.

This is when I started thinking about what his immediate call meant on the turn. I came to the conclusion that his quick call was a dead giveaway that he didn’t have a made hand, and that it dramatically increased the draws in his hand. If he had had a pair of 8’s, like an A8 kind of hand, he would have thought for at least a few seconds before making the call. Same thing if he had 99 through QQ; with a vulnerable pair he would have thought for a few seconds. Also with those hands he would have likely raised the flop or at least thought for a few seconds about it, but he called quickly on the flop, too. And with stronger hands like sets, chances are he would have raised me on the flop or turn, or at least considered it longer.

The more you think about it, a flush draw with overcards is so much more highly represented in the range of hands that he calls quickly with there, because it is (for many players) a hand of obvious strength and a no-brainer call. Most players are much more likely to put in money with that type of hand than they are with single-pair hands, even pretty high pairs.

In the book and in some past blog posts I’ve talked about the fact that quick calls of substantial bets are more likely to be draws than made hands. The important thing to realize about quick calls is that the player has decided very quickly not to raise but they have also decided very quickly that they are not folding. This can sometimes give you a lot of information. (It is especially meaningful when you are first to act and they are calling your bet, as opposed to them checking first and then calling a bet, because in the second case they’ve had more time to consider their options and plan a decision.)

I’ve talked about this tendency (quicker calls of substantial bets being more likely draws than made hands) in the book and in this blog, but I know I’m not that great at using that information in the moment as best as I’m able, especially now that I’m not playing as much as I used to. It helps me to write this stuff down because it makes it more conscious for me and helps me recognize it better next time, in the moment.

Looking more critically at the math involved, it seems it was a clear smart move for me to bet the river just from a fundamental perspective, considering the most likely hands he’s calling with (99+) are less numerous than the many drawing hands that beat me (mainly Ax of hearts) and weaker pairs he might fold to a bet. In the moment, though, I had decided he probably had a mediocre hand (as weak as a lone 8) that he wasn’t going to fold just because he was adjusting to me being aggressive.

As happens frequently, though, I think I was overthinking a relatively simple spot and making the mistake of jumping to a conclusion, thinking that he was being stubborn with my perceived aggression and willing to call down much lighter than he’d shown evidence of prior to that hand. If I had thought more about his immediate turn call, I would have been better able to put the pieces of the puzzle together a little quicker and could have decided that firing the river was the clearly superior move.

NOTE: See comments below and responses for more discussion on this. Also see soon-to-come post on same topic.

The post $2-5: quick call of turn bet indicates probable draw appeared first on Reading Poker Tells.

First, and most importantly, it reminded me that, for your average live $1-2 player, looking for poker tells is a waste of time. Not that they are not present; they are, but most players’ time would be much better spent studying some basic strategies instead of looking for tells. So if you’re a struggling live $1-2 player, reading this article will be a waste of time; read a basic strat book like Dan Harrington on Cash Games, James Sweeney’s Dynamic Full Ring Poker, or Ed Miller’s Small Stakes No Limit Hold’em, or start reading posts in one of the many poker strategy forums, like the Live Low Stakes forum at Twoplustwo.com.

Second, the other reason poker tells are of limited use in a live low-stakes game like this is because players often do weird, goofy things that fly in the face of logic. So getting a read that a player has a mediocre hand doesn’t do you much if that player is randomly going to go all the way with that hand. Many players at live $1-2 will frequently call off all their chips with a pair and a draw, or even just a draw, even if they wouldn’t bet it. Many players also overvalue hands like AK, and will put a lot of chips in pre-flop or on the flop with those hands. So this just reinforces the idea that you shouldn’t be wasting too much time looking for soul reads, but should instead be just noticing player-specific playing styles.

Third, I had forgotten how passive many players are who play at these stakes. For those players, there were no real post-bet tells to speak of. (Post-bet tells are a category of tells that occur after someone has bet; this distinguishes them from other situations.) If these players bet a lot of money, they were going to have a strong hand, period. For many players with this playing style, you can forget about studying them for post-bet tells, just because the likelihood of them ever making a significant bluff is highly unlikely. (But this does point to the fact that if you do have aggressive players at the table, those are the people it is more beneficial to study first.)

Usually, in higher-stakes games (and often in some $1-2 games) there are a good amount of aggressive players, which makes looking for post-bet tells more useful. I usually say that post-bet tells, when they come after significant bets, are the most important information to gather, but playing $1-2 reminded me that in these more passive games, where many people are just waiting for a hand, they aren’t that important.

I would say some of the key money-making decision points against more passive, nitty players at this level (besides just waiting for good hands) are:

• Deciding when to continuation bet with weak hands in multi-way pots
• Deciding when to bluff the turn
• Deciding when to bluff the river

Most of that will boil down to fundamental strategy and player tendencies. But every once in a while a poker tell can help you out in one of these spots.

So what poker tells are important? After getting back into the swing of things at $1-2, here were the behaviors I found most important:

• Taking a long time to check when weak
• Defensive chip handling when weak
• After cards arrive, staring at board when weak

These are all waiting-for-action tells, as opposed to post-bet tells, which makes sense when you’re dealing with players who aren’t betting as much and are instead calling way too much. I’ll explain these all in order and give a couple examples.

Taking a long time to check when weak
Some players will take a long time to check to the aggressor when they hold weak hands. Don’t use this tell generally, though, because most players will vary their bet- and check-timing enough (both consciously and because there can be a lot of thought-inducing situations with many different types of hands) that it’s hard to get a good read. But against some players it can be very useful information.

For example, let’s say a player calls your pre-flop raise, hits a medium pair on the flop, checks to you and calls your flop bet. The turn card comes, doesn’t improve him, and he then takes like ten seconds to check to you. Whereas if he had a top-pair hand or better, where he knew he was probably going to be calling, he would only take a couple of seconds to check.

I’m not saying this is extremely useful information, because sometimes, with a medium-strength hand, $1-2 players will call you anyway. It’s going to be mainly useful against the most nitty players; the ones you know are scared to carry on without very strong hands. Those are the ones who you might bet off the hand on the turn if you get some sense of weakness.

Along with taking a long time to check, a player might look very studious in studying the board, as if trying to figure out what to do. That combined behavior is usually a sign of a vulnerable hand. As is the following tell, which you can sometimes see in concert with these:

Defensive chip handling when weak
The gist of this one is that players will often try to make you think they’re interested in calling by handling their chips in a defensive manner when it’s your turn to act. They might hold their chips in their hand, as if ready to put them in. They might start cutting out chips as if ready to call. Basically, any chip handling action that looks vaguely defensive in nature, even if it’s quite subtle, is usually a sign that the player holds a vulnerable hand. When a player holds a strong hand, they want to give no impediment to your bet, no matter how small.

This is a very useful one; it’s one that came up a handful of times in hands I was in, making me feel better about making a large river bluff. In one hand in particular, I had been betting first to act on the flop and turn, and I thought it was quite possible my opponent had flopped the flush draw. When a low flush card came on the river, I probably usually would have given up on the bluff, except for the fact I saw him riffling his chips in his hand while he stared at me (staring at an opponent when they’re waiting to act can also be a sign of weakness), so I bet $100 and he folded.

Two other hands went down very similarly to that. In one three-bet pot, where I’d three-bet and whiffed with AQ, an opponent called the flop, but I pushed all-in on a turn of 9JK3 based on my opponent grabbing his chips and holding them up defensively as he checked to me. It wasn’t usually a spot I would have felt so comfortable in.

Again, even if this tell is only 75% reliable, that’s still a great reason to carry through on a bluff that’s already got a lot of logic behind it; in my experience, though, this tell is more reliable than that for most players.

Staring at board cards when weak
I had forgotten how much the staring-at-the-board when weak applied to low stakes. At higher limits it wasn’t something I was accustomed to looking for as much, because at $2-5 and above I feel players are better about being more consistent with where they look. But this brought back to me how much information is out there with this, and why it is important to be looking at the players when the cards arrive.

Also, this is a more present tell in multi-way pots, because in heads-up spots, even bad players tend to be more on their guard and less likely to give away obvious tells like this.

The gist of this tell is that players who connect well (like top pair or better) tend to look away from the board when the cards come out. This can be seen as an involuntarily, unconscious attempt to distract attention away from value.

I got back into the habit of trying to watch everyone in the hand during multi-way flops, trying to see if anyone looked away immediately. Mainly I tried to watch the player or players behind me, because that is more valuable information than what the players in front of me do.

For example, in most three-way (or more) pots, if I’m the pre-flop raiser, I usually will shut down if the board comes down pretty scary and I haven’t connected. Like if I raise pre-flop and the board is 9TQ or something similar, I give up if I raised with 67s, or AK, or something that missed completely, because those are the types of boards that hit right in the range of most players who call a raise. Whereas on a really dry board, like K73 rainbow, I will usually bet into two other players (but not usually three other players).

But looking for opponents who are staring at the flop can make me feel more comfortable about betting into a multi-way pot. It happened several times in three-way and four-way pots where I wouldn’t usually have bet from a fundamental strategy perspective, but the immense amount of staring going on by my opponents made me feel safer. Occasionally, I would still get one caller out of the bunch, but that still put me in more profitable spots than not betting, and I felt more confident, based on their staring, that they had weak hands.

Again, this is not something you want to use to make very large decisions. Good players will stare consistently at the flop whether they hit or not. And even for the people who exhibit this tell the most, it won’t always be entirely accurate. This will mainly be useful for determining fairly borderline situations, like when you decide to get aggressive and follow through on flop bets in multiway pots, or follow through on turn bets, or when you decide to take a more passive line. Those can be very borderline situations, so a little extra information can go a long way.

Conclusions
All in all, I never want to give the impression that tells are something that will let you crush microstakes, or any game for that matter. I think they can give you little hints here and there for the best action to take, but these are often actions that are dictated by fundamental strategy. Occasionally, you can get really obvious signs from some players that dictate a very specific course of action, but you shouldn’t try too hard to look for those spots. Those are spots that will come to you naturally, the more comfortable you get with tells.

The post Poker tells at live $1-2 no-limit appeared first on Reading Poker Tells.

The length of time first looking at hole cards can be meaningful

I got heads-up in a NLHE tournament the other night and noticed that my opponent had a very common poker tell: when his hole cards were weak, he’d stare at them for a couple seconds on his initial look at them. This can be a useful tell at a full table, but I’ve found it’s especially common when in a short-handed or heads-up situation. Instead of posting this story here, I got permission from CardsChat.com to post it in their forums.

Here’s the link to my post: http://www.cardschat.com/f13/very-useful-poker-tell-heads-up-215213.

The post Length of time looking at hole cards: a really useful heads-up poker tell appeared first on Reading Poker Tells.