When Putting Someone On a Hand.....
are we really just putting ourselves on?
I've been mulling something over lately after reading the numerous hand summaries people have been posting and I'd be interested in your thoughts.
When people say things like *I put him on a small pocket pair* or * I figured him for a flush draw*, I question the profitability of such thinking. Don't get me wrong, I recognize that at the highest levels this is a critical component of successful play - knowing what your opponent likely has is more important than your own cards in many instances. And sometimes its not too hard to figure out. However, at the lower levels is such speculation not often fraught with peril? How can we know what someone else is holding? Maniacs and calling stations are everywhere, ramming and jamming with J T offsuit, calling all the way with 7 5 suited and K 3 offsuit. Is there such a thing as a *STANDARD* preflop raise which might tip you off to someone's pocket cards? In other words, are you confident that a pot-sized bet pre-flop means AA KK or AK or QQ? Could it not be any of a number of other holdings? Come on - we've all seen it! By performing such analysis, are we not imposing our thought process on others - i.e. he check-raised a flop of Q 7 2 rainbow.....I would only check-raise that if I had flopped a set, therefore he has a set! Does anyone see the danger in this?
And at the higher levels, should it not be even more difficult to put someone on a hand? Are the better players not more adept at disguising their holdings so that it's very hard to put them on any 2 cards? Gus Hansen is a good example - who knows what he has. He reraises from the button preflop and the flop is 9 6 2 with 2 hearts. The action is on you - what do you do? Has the flop hit him or not. Hell if I know. All I know is whether it hit me or not. And isn't that the object of the game? So by assigning likely holdings to opponents, are we really just bs-ing ourselves? Are we making the game tougher than it needs to be and are we setting ourselves up for big losses?
I know this isn't articulated very well - hopefully you will see where I'm going with this and I look forward to any feedback.
I guess I'm just bitter cuz I'm not good at putting people on hands. On the bright side, I attribute it to the fact that I like to think I am fairly unconventional and unpredictable - I could be playing anything therefore I suspect my opponents could be doing the same. If you are good at putting your opponents on hands, is it because you play a fairly textbook or standard game (if such game even exists) yourself?
I'm rambling...please jump in and save me from myself........
I've been mulling something over lately after reading the numerous hand summaries people have been posting and I'd be interested in your thoughts.
When people say things like *I put him on a small pocket pair* or * I figured him for a flush draw*, I question the profitability of such thinking. Don't get me wrong, I recognize that at the highest levels this is a critical component of successful play - knowing what your opponent likely has is more important than your own cards in many instances. And sometimes its not too hard to figure out. However, at the lower levels is such speculation not often fraught with peril? How can we know what someone else is holding? Maniacs and calling stations are everywhere, ramming and jamming with J T offsuit, calling all the way with 7 5 suited and K 3 offsuit. Is there such a thing as a *STANDARD* preflop raise which might tip you off to someone's pocket cards? In other words, are you confident that a pot-sized bet pre-flop means AA KK or AK or QQ? Could it not be any of a number of other holdings? Come on - we've all seen it! By performing such analysis, are we not imposing our thought process on others - i.e. he check-raised a flop of Q 7 2 rainbow.....I would only check-raise that if I had flopped a set, therefore he has a set! Does anyone see the danger in this?
And at the higher levels, should it not be even more difficult to put someone on a hand? Are the better players not more adept at disguising their holdings so that it's very hard to put them on any 2 cards? Gus Hansen is a good example - who knows what he has. He reraises from the button preflop and the flop is 9 6 2 with 2 hearts. The action is on you - what do you do? Has the flop hit him or not. Hell if I know. All I know is whether it hit me or not. And isn't that the object of the game? So by assigning likely holdings to opponents, are we really just bs-ing ourselves? Are we making the game tougher than it needs to be and are we setting ourselves up for big losses?
I know this isn't articulated very well - hopefully you will see where I'm going with this and I look forward to any feedback.
I guess I'm just bitter cuz I'm not good at putting people on hands. On the bright side, I attribute it to the fact that I like to think I am fairly unconventional and unpredictable - I could be playing anything therefore I suspect my opponents could be doing the same. If you are good at putting your opponents on hands, is it because you play a fairly textbook or standard game (if such game even exists) yourself?
I'm rambling...please jump in and save me from myself........
Comments
I'll have to admit that I completely suck at putting people on specific hands, but I do like to think that I can develop reasonable *ranges* of hands that people could have based on the action. Consequently, I rarely put someone on a hand pre-flop. (There are some exceptions of course, e.g. when *both* all_aces and MickeyHoldem re-raise my UTG pre-flop raise by the minimum, I know my TT is no good.)
I seriously doubt that I would generally be able to make statements as specific as "I put him on a small pocket pair", especially pre-flop, unless my opponent is insanely predictable *and* varies the size of his pre-flop raises.
I often get the feeling that a lot of people are just claiming that they have put someone on a hand *retroactively*, in order to justify a bad play.
In my experience, a minimum raise, either as a re-raise or from stealing position, is almost always a big hand like QQ-AA, or sometimes AK.
ScottyZ
I'll also admit that I made a couple of mistakes that cost me. On one particular hand I badly misread a player's hand (one of the guys I had correctly read before a couple of times with the top pair, bad kicker), and was so convinced my initial read of the player was correct that I missed all the clues that he had a set and that my hand was not good from the flop on. Looking at how I played it after the fact, I know where I went wrong. It wasn't in placing him on the hand, but in not keeping my mind open to other possibilities, especially once the player's betting pattern on the turn and river should have alerted me that I had misread the player. Basically I notice that a weakness I have is sometimes getting tunnel vision once I think I have a player read.
Also, I agree a lot of times that it seems better to consider what another player might have, but focus mostly on playing my cards in the situation rather than believing I can really put them on a specific hand. As an example, at a low limit B&M game again, if the flop comes Ace, rag, rag, I'll still play my A- good kicker hands aggressively, but I'll be wary that a lot of players could have anything.... Ace-rag, two low pairs, Ace-King, a set, etc.. I have no way of knowing what some players have. I'm trying to get a more general read about the strength of their hand in that situation, often without any success.
When I think over a hand I misplayed, my mind often tries to recreate some thought process that would justify how I played... then I realize I'm full of b.s. and come back to reality. One thing I notice when my mind tries to justify some stupid play is that even the excuse I make up doesn't really make sense when I really think about it i.e. "if that was what I was thinking, then why would I have bet on the turn?... ".