Afterthought: Other Skills
As you have just seen, reading hands and psychology are extremely important aspects of seven card stud eight-or-better.
Put another way, this game is too complex to play by rote.
If you always play a certain hand in a certain position a certain way, your game can use a lot of improvement.
You must take into account your opponents, how the current hand has been played, how former hands were played, your opponent's perceptions of you, and so on.
If you don’t consider these things, you may be able to win, but you never will achieve expert status.
Many of the ideas in this section are most powerful against decent players – that is, players who play in predictable patterns and who are capable of realizing things when at the poker table.
Against bad players, straightforward play is usually the best approach, and against extremely good players, these ideas probably can keep you only about even with them.
Finally, some players put too much emphasis on the topics just covered.
They are certainly very important, but they are just some of the weapons that the expert has in his seven card stud eight-or-better arsenal.
To produce a top player, reading hands and psychology must be utilized in conjunction with all the other ideas and concepts that I have addressed.
