No matter what specific
variant of poker you’re playing, playing profitable poker is all about
mastering the following process:
1. Put your opponents on hand distributions
2. Evaluate your own hand (or put yourself on a hand distribution if
you’re playing a game like Blind Man’s Bluff)
3. Predict how your opponents will respond to every possible action
you can make
4. Pick the most profitable line of play based on #1-#3
Today, we’ll focus on putting your opponents on hand distributions when
you first sit at a table.
Default Distributions
Putting your opponents on hand distributions is all about reading your
opponents’ betting patterns and picking off their physical tells. You
don’t really have the ability to put your opponents on hand distributions
until you’ve carefully observed them play for a few orbits. Does this
mean that you should fold the first forty or fifty hands you’re dealt?
Hell no…especially if you’re playing at a shorthanded table or in a
tournament. The good news is that you actually have information about
players you’ve never seen in your life. Before you even play a single
hand, you have all your past poker playing experience to draw upon,
meaning that you can assign a default playing profile to each opponent
before you see the table play a single hand. This default profile will
be the average of all the players you typically face.
The more accurate your default profile is, the less trouble you’ll get
yourself into during the first orbit or two. However, your default profile
is not enough to get you through an entire session or tournament, no
matter how good it is. No matter how good your default profile is, you
must identify as quickly as possible how each of your opponents deviates
from your default playing profile and adjust your play accordingly.
Easier to Accurately Adjust Default Distributions From Tight To Loose
Suppose your default profile assumes that an early position raise means
{AT+, 77+}. If you see a player raise with 33 under-the-gun, that one
hand gives you sufficient evidence to adjust his early position raising
distribution to {AT+, 33+} (and most likely, 22 should also be included).
Another opponent shows down AK and JJ after raising from early position.
These two hands alone do not provide evidence sufficient for trimming
this opponent’s early position raising distribution down to {AK, JJ+}.
Tightening up hand distribution reads typically requires more data than
loosening up hand distribution reads, meaning that it’s usually best
to assign default player profiles that err towards being too tight.
Tony
Guerrera is the author of Killer
Poker By The Numbers. Visit him online at http://www.killerpokerbythenumbers.com
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