GATHERING INFORMATION
As play goes along, give yourself a running commentary of the events, “she open-raises, he folds,he cold-calls. ”Don’t do it out loud.
You must make a lot of mental notes based on this, and you must do this even when you’re not in a hand, because in addition to being useful during a hand, it’s useful for later poker hands.
You want to see the frequency with which a player sees the flop, the frequency with which a player defends his blinds from raises, and the hands a player open-raises with, raises with, cold-calls with, and just calls with.
In conjunction with the narrowing down of the hands discussed, this will often give you a good idea of what’s going on even when there is no showdown.
Stereotype each player, as well as note particular idiosyncrasies of the individuals for use not only now but in future sessions.
It’s useful to get an concept, for each player, what kinds of hands he’ll tend to play, and how he’ll play them in various situations.
Getting this kind of information can take some time, but you should do it for those players with whom you play poker regularly. Write a book on them.
Examples of the kind of information you should look for about specific hands are:
1. Will he play pocket pairs less than 6,6, and from what position?
2. When he plays an Axs from UTG, will he limp or raise? What’s his cutoff for an open-raise?
3. If he’s on the button, will he raise with Axs?
4. Will he raise with less than a nut flush when the flush card hits?
5. Will he raise and reraise with a flush draw when heads up?
6. If he raises with two big cards pre-flop, will be continue betting to the river with just overcard?
You will have to answer dozens more questions about each player to get book written, but these questions should be a good start.
Once you’ve answered some of these questions about a poker player, you can sometimes infer the answers to others.
Pick the Right Table / Picking a Seat / Theories of Poker / Betting Theory: The Odds
A Theory of Starting Hand Value
A Theory of Flop Play: Counting Outs and Evaluating Draws
The Dynamics of Game Conditions / Table Image / Player Stereotypes
Women and Poker / Spread-Limit Games / Double Bet on the End Games / Kill Games
Short-handed Games / Tournaments / No-limit and Pot-Limit Poker
