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READING HANDS IN MULTI-WAY POTS
Another factor in reading hands and deciding how to play your own is the number of players in the pot.
Any time someone bets and someone else calls, you are in a more precarious position than when it is just up to you to call.
In general, a caller ahead of you makes it necessary for you to tighten up significantly because you no longer have the extra equity that the bettor may be bluffing.
Whether he is bluffing or not, the second chance of catching a bluff, it is not worth an overcall when someone else has called ahead of you.
Here is an example of such a situation that came up in a small ante razz game I was playing. On the first three cards I had an:
A decent hand but not a great one. The high card brought it in, and a player called with a5 showing. I was prepared to call or possible raise.
However, a player ahead of me, who was playing tight, raised with a 4 showing.
Had the first player with the 5 showing not called the initial bet, I would have called the raiser with my 8,5,2 because, though the raiser was playing tight, there would have been a chance he was semi-bluffing.
But since the raiser another low card that had already called, it was almost a certainty he had a better hand than I did; and there was also the probability the first called had a good hand.
Therefore, given the small ante, my hand was no longer worth a call.
The same sort of thinking must be employed when deciding whether to call a raiser cold. With very few exceptions, you need a better hand to call a raise cold than you would need to raise yourself. The simple poker logic of this principle can be set forth through an example from draw poker.
Let’s say in the game you are playing you decide to raise before the draw with aces up or better. You look at your hand and find you have three 2s.
You’re prepared to raise, but all of a sudden the player to your right, who will also raise with aces up or better, puts in a raise.
Now instead of raising, you can’t even call. You must fold because the chances are too good that the raiser has you beat.
This principle applies to any game. When you have a minimum or near-minimum raising hand and the player to your right, who has the same standards as yours, raises ahead of you, then his hand is probably better than yours, and your correct play is to fold.
Summary
Reading hands well is a powerful poker weapon because it allows you to play correctly more often, according to the Fundamental Theorem of Poker.
The better you read your opponent’s hands, the less likely you are to play your hand differently from the way you would play it if you could actually see what your opponents had. Weak players are difficult to read because there is little pattern to their play.
Good players are easier because here is logic to their play. However, very tough players are more difficult to read because of their ability to disguise their hands.
One way to read hands is to put opponents on a variety of possible hands and eliminate some of them on the basis of their play and the cards game they catch from one round to the next, keeping track of the order in which they catch their cards.
A second, complementary way is to work backward, looking at an opponent’s later plays in terms of how he played his hand in earlier rounds.
You can also read hands by using mathematics, by comparing possible hand on the basis of Bayes’ Theorem.
If you know an opponent will bet only certain hands, you form a ratio based on the probability of that opponent being dealt each of those hands.
To simplify, you can divide his possible hands between those you can beat and those you can’t beat. The ratio tells you which of the hands he is favored to have.
Finally, when reading hands you must consider the number of people in the pot.
When there is a caller ahead of you, the caller and the original bettor cannot both be bluffing, so you must play on the assumption that you are up against at least one legitimate hand.
When there is a raiser ahead of you with the same standards as yours, you should have more than your minimum raising hand to call that raiser because you have to figure your minimal raising hand id beat.
Throughout this chapter it has been implicitly suggested that a significant aspect of reading hands is knowing your opponents. Which leads us to the next chapter, “The Psychology of Poker.”