Knowing the position is not enough. You also have to identify your opponent’s type.
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If they’re passive, they could be playing just 15% of hands from the cutoff (CO), while an aggressive opponent could be opening 35% or even more.
The same thought process should be applied for other situations when someone limps, or you face a 3-bet.
When you evaluate your opponent’s position and playing style, you can already make an educated guess of what hands they could be playing.
Step 2: Narrow down the range based on flop action
The next step is quite straightforward. Using information from the flop action, you can narrow down their range.
You can learn what your opponent should do in any given situation by studying game theory optimal (GTO) strategy and then adjust these ranges based on your observations.
This will help you understand what hands your opponent should be checking or betting and then reduce their likely holdings accordingly.
Step 3: Evaluate additional information
To narrow down the range even further, you should look at all the other information available to you.
Things like your opponent’s stats, bet sizing, or even physical tells can say a lot about their holdings. The table dynamics will give you a ton of additional insights.
Step 4: Keep reducing their possible holdings on the turn and river
Just like you did in the second step for the flop play, you can continue reducing your opponent’s possible holdings based on their actions and community cards on the turn and river.
So after seeing it once, you’ll be able to remove these holdings from their range in similar spots.
You can quickly get a feel of player tendencies and use this information until you notice that your particular opponent adjusts their play, and then react accordingly.
Learning to put your opponent on a range instead of guessing a specific hand is the best way to read other players.
However, you can make even better decisions if you take into consideration all the additional information available to you.
Given that you don’t physically see your opponent when playing online, there are only a few things you can consider.
You should closely monitor bet sizing and how long your opponent takes to make decisions.
Free BetsLet’s start with the first one.
Although probably the best indication of your opponent’s strength, this information is massively underused in games.
Players are unlikely to bet small as a bluff. Of course, they can do that with medium-strength hands, but you will rarely see complete air when facing such a bet. For the most part, they are simply trying to see a cheap showdown.
This is very player dependent but more often than not people try to choose over bets with strong holdings. This shouldn’t be applied against regulars who balance their ranges.
However, if you see someone using truly big sizing, especially on dry board, they are more likely to be value betting.
Most players understand that your range is polarized in these situations, where you either have a strong hand that is going to call no matter what or a weak one, which will be folding even to a smaller bet – so it makes no point to over bet as a bluff.
These are just guidelines but could be a good starting point when observing your opponents.
These are just guidelines but could be a good starting point when observing your opponents.
2. Observe how much time they spend making decisions
Many players leave a lot of valuable information on the table by not considering the timing of others.
Some actions can be a very good indication of your opponent’s hand strength:
Almost always an indication of a weak hand. It shows that your opponent didn’t have to spend any time to think through the decision, which is very unlikely to happen with a strong holding.
Can indicate strength, except for a c-bet. When a player instantly decides to continuation bet, they’re less likely to have a strong holding, but in most other cases you should be aware of this information.
Very unlikely to have a strong holding. From my experience, a bet in this situation will take down the most, the majority of the time.
Betting or raising after taking a lot of time
This is very strong. I rarely see players bluffing with this line, and the reason they take more time is to appear weak, so you shouldn’t be fooled by this action.
Generally indicates more strength. We can follow the same logic as in the previous point that players tend to take more time to look weaker and encourage another bet from you.
