Some thoughts on quick reads of opponent tendencies

Plus: some tells of weakness from a calling opponent

Tonight, as I’m writing this, I’m staying in Reno for a night on a long drive and earlier I popped into the nearest poker room to my hotel — a $1-3 game at El Dorado — to play for a few minutes before bed. I played an interesting hand that got me thinking about quick reads of players: how it’s sometimes possible to get a good amount of information very quickly. Sometimes this happens in unconscious ways, I think; sizing up a player and what their tendencies are can be based on a slew of small clues, some of which we may not be able to fully put our fingers on. This was a hand where I felt like, despite never seeing this player play a hand before, I had a good instinct for what he was capable of. 

(I want to also say that, for anyone who’s curious, I’m very much out of the poker scene these days. This is like the fifth time I’ve played poker in the last five years, and I didn’t play much in the five years before that either. This is just to say that if I were playing more regularly I’d have more interesting and frequent posts to share about hands I myself have played, but as it is, not so much. But I do hope to do some video analysis to add to the video series soon.)

Roughly 12 hands or so after sitting down, this hand develops: 

A player (the villain) limps UTG for $3. Two other players call. In UTG+, I have Ac Ad and raise to $24. The UTG villain calls me, as do the two players between me and him. 

The flop comes 4s 4c 3d (pot $103) (I’m not subtracting rake).

They both check and I bet $45. The villain stares and glances at me for a bit (which in general means weakness, assuming he calls; he’s looking for information, sizing things up, is the general meaning; that is a much better behavior for me than him avoiding looking at me entirely, which will be a common behavior if he flopped big) and then calls. One player folds. The last player, a very-new, clueless player calls off the rest of his money (like $30). 

The turn makes it 4s 3c 3d 9h (pot $223).

They both check. Still a lot of glancing from the UTG player at me, making me think he’s more than likely weak (but as with all reads, it’s just a likelihood thing, not a highly confident kind of thing). 

I bet $95. The UTG player fairly quickly asks, “How much is it?”, again, another behavior that makes me think he’s on the weaker side (see an example of this pattern) (provided it doesn’t seem to be part of a display of concern/uncertainty followed by a raise, which would be a sign of strength). He thinks for quite a bit and then calls. 

I think 6-5 suited is quite a likely hand for him. With my admittedly quick read of him, he doesn’t strike me as someone with a medium-strength pocket pair here, with the pre-flop limping and then calling these bets.

(Pot: $415)

At this point in time, I start thinking what I’ll do if this player shoves the river. He has about $350 behind. I fairly quickly decide that this is a player I think I can call when he shoves the river, assuming it’s a blank. And that is not usually a feeling I have versus most low-stakes players who I know nothing about: I tend to give them a lot of credit. 

As a general rule, for most players, and especially for most $1-2 and $1-3 players, I err on the side of highly respecting their big bets, at least until I learn differently (e.g., seeing that they’re capable of making large bluffs, or some other clue that they’re a serious, tough player). In general, I’ll assume they’re a pretty tight, nitty player who’s unlikely to make big bluffs (especially because a lot of rec players size their bluffs too small if/when they do bluff). Practical meaning of this: when I first sit down at a table, when I know very little about player tendencies, I give big bets a lot of respect. 

So I was thinking about what the factors were that would make me feel this player would be someone likely to fire a big bluff. Some of this is probably a bit unconscious but if I had to try to lay out the factors that contributed to my quick read, they were: 

• He had a kind of smirky, arrogant look to him. He liked to stare at me, and when he did that, I had a feeling that he looked at me like I was a chump. Hard to describe, but it was a willingness to hold my gaze when I looked at him, combined with a smirking kind of expression. 

• His looking at me and sizing me up after my bets made it more likely that he wasn’t only thinking about whether to call; he was also thinking about whether to raise. His pretty long time before making the calls was also a factor here (a decision to call or fold is simpler than a decision to call, fold, or raise).

• He had a larger than average stack (most players had like $100-300) and the chips were organized well and he was chip-riffling, all of which combined made me think he took poker seriously (regardless of if he was good or not). 

These things (maybe other things) combined to make me see this player as someone capable of firing big bluffs — maybe as someone who bluffed more than he should. It was a vibe I got from him, despite basically never seeing him play a hand. And that’s not a vibe I often get immediately, so I found it interesting. 

And then, also, thrown into the mix of why I felt I could often call a river shove were the behaviors on the flop and turn that made weakness more likely. None of them were that huge on their own, but combined, they did make weakness quite likely. (And often, that’s when tells are most useful: two or three smaller, not-that-reliable-on-their-own tells all pointing in the same direction.) 

The river comes a 7, making it 4s 3c 3d 9h 7d. 

He checks and I check, and he shows 6h 5h for the straight. He says, “If you had bet a little bit more on the turn, I would have folded.” 

Then he was discussing the hand with another player beside him who seemed to take the game seriously also. They were talking low at the other end of the table. The villain told him, “If I missed the straight, I think I would’ve shoved,” and I think he was being honest. Another factor in all this: it was easy to imagine that he saw me as a typical older-guy weak-tight recreational player who, with my biggish pre-flop raise, likely had a hand like QQ-AA and would probably lay down to a big river bet. 

Anyway, I found this hand kind of interesting in thinking about the often small little clues a person can give off about their tendencies — and about how much information we sometimes might pick up, even unconsciously, in those areas.