You are a good poker player if you know how to read the hands of your opponents. But if you don’t know how, you are still like a work on progress.
It is your edge actually if you know how to read hands. But it is not necessary that you can read hands a hundred percent of the time, you just have to do things right.
Well, if you don’t know how to read hands, you can actually learn. You can start by simply knowing your opponents. Have patience in knowing how they play and how they react to unlikely happenings at the table. Most especially, observe what kind of hands do they usually keep or else fold.
Then after knowing your opponents, watch out for some tells. Be very attentive even to little tells. Look out for a tightening jaw, raised brow, or twitched lips. These can mean certain significant things. But as you watch out for these non-verbal gestures, never miss to observe the betting patterns so you could make right decisions.
Right after watching out for some tells, focus now on the hands that usually appear at showdown and trace back how they reached such phase. Check what happened at pre-flop, post-flop, post-turn, and post-river. Maybe you can then find out how.
Then, know the strategy of your opponents through observing their betting patterns. Their betting patterns may not give you sufficient information but they can help. You can make good predictions later if you understand them better.
As you try to learn how to read hands, be careful. You maybe not aware, but others are maybe trying to get a read on your hands as you learn how to. Aside from trying to read others’ hands, try also to read if others are trying to read your hands too.
