Hand reading is one of the toughest skills for many aspiring poker players. It’s easy to read a book and learn about pot odds, learn about playing aggressively, and so forth. But many players, especially many new players, are lost at sea when it comes to hand reading. They don’t even know where to start.

A lot of hand reading is deductive reasoning coupled with thousands of hands worth of observation with a little psychology thrown in. In other words, it’s a fairly complex process. But some hand reading is pleasantly simple.

The most simple form is the “giveaway” where your opponent does one thing that’s just a dead giveaway about what they have. You may not be able to nail it down to two exact cards, but you can narrow their range enough that you can really take advantage.

Every player performs a “giveaway” once in a while, but the inexperienced and amateur players you’ll find in your local $1-$2 NL game or home game probably do them all the time. Obviously, every player is different, but here are four common preflop “giveaways” that I see and exploit a lot while I play….  read rest of article at Noted Poker Authority

by Jim Woods
You’re seated at a $1/$2 NL holdem table where the action has been moderate. You’ve limped in late position with suited 87 and no one raised. Five players see the J 3 4 flop. When the first three players check, you figure, “Hell, SOMEONE has to win this $10 pot,” so you buckle your chinstrap and fire in ten bucks. Why?

You can think of LOTS of reasons, right? “That flop probably missed everyone. I have position on all but one player. My opponents may think that there are lots of hands containing a jack with which I might have limped. Even if I don’t win the pot now, I’ll probably scare out the only player behind me and then be in primo position for the rest of the hand. C’mon, Woodsie, you wuss — I didn’t come here to WATCH!”

In my humble opinion, none of those are good reasons. There are plenty of holdem flops and turns that DON’T warrant a bet. So someone exclaims “Pot for sale!” after a checkaround or two–who cares? I don’t know about you, but I don’t sit down at a poker table to watch, either. I want to go home a winner, and bets like the one above aren’t usually in the winning formula.

Let’s review. First, it’s a $1/$2 game, so the odds are high that your bet will be called, even by people who didn’t hit the flop. Picture, for example, a player with 65 offsuit–think he’ll be too afraid to call you, even out of position? Further, suppose you make a pair of 7’s on the turn. He’ll check, and you’ll…. read rest of article at PokerPages.com

By Mike Caro
People read books. People read books on poker. People read books on poker and they study and study. People read books on poker and they study and study and then they sit down for their first cardroom experience. Then what?I’ll tell you then what. Then they most likely have chosen to seat themselves in a $1-$2, $2-$4, or $3-$6 limit seven-card stud or hold’em game and nothing seems the way it was promised. What good does it do to know about check-raising, about reraising aggressively to get extra value, or about tricking your foes?

What they don’t know might hurt them. Those foes don’t even know that they’re in danger of being check-raised or what it means when that happens. They don’t understand why a medium-strong hand is OK to play against a single raise, but often not OK to play against a reraise. And they aren’t likely to be tricked, because they don’t have a firm understanding about what a nontrick play should look like.

Instead of going into casino poker games unarmed, as was necessary years ago when no credible books laid out winning strategies for cardroom poker, lots of new players today do something very smart. They decide…. read rest of article at Poker Pages

by Chris “Jesus” Ferguson
I’m nine months into an experiment on Full Tilt Poker. I’m attempting to turn $0 into a $10,000 bankroll.

With no money to start, I had no choice but to begin playing freerolls. Starting out, I’d often manage to win a dollar or two, but I’d quickly get busted and have to start over again. It took some time but, after a while, I was eventually able to graduate to games that required an actual buy-in. As of this writing, my bankroll stands at $225.96, so I’m well on my way.

Even today, people don’t believe it’s really me when I sit down at Full Tilt’s small stakes games. They ask what I’m doing down here, and often tell me stories about how they turned $5 into $500 or $100 into $1,000. Usually, these stories end with them telling me that they…. read rest of article at Bluff Magazine