Laws Of Hand Reading

Hand reading is a powerful skill that all successful poker players need. The ability to put your opponent on a correct range of hands gives you a massive leg-up on your competition. By putting someone on a correct range, you are able to value bet thinner, bluff better, and ultimately make a plethora of profitable decisions. So improving your hand-reading skills is vital for winning extra pots.

Before you get into doing hardcore range analysis and density breakdowns of specific ranges, it’s good to wrap your head around the fundamental concepts. Which brings us to the three laws of hand reading. If you keep these laws in mind the next time you build a range, you’ll be on the right track towards pinpointing your opponent on a precise range that you can then exploit!

Hand Ranges Are Linear
The first law is the law of linear. This states that ranges start from preflop and as information/action happens, that range contorts from street-to-street/action-to-action. One major element to the law is that a range can narrow or stay the same width from street-to-street, but it can never expand.

If a player wouldn’t open-raise from UTG with 94s, it’s impossible for them to have it on the turn. But so many players overlook this and treat a range like a bag that they throw random worst-case scenario hands into. Just because 85 is the nuts on a 764-K board doesn’t mean your opponent has it if they wouldn’t play 85 preflop!

So remember: ranges can never expand, and ranges start from the beginning. Be linear and go from action-to-action when hand reading, and always make sure to think about the hands with which villain would enter the pot.

Players Use Logic When Creating A Range
Ranges are logical. When a thinking player chooses a range of hands to play they use logic. They consider things like stack depth, position, who’s left to act, and so on. They decide which hands make up a sensible continuance range against a c-bet, and which hands are worth a value bet on the end. Which means that when you’ve dialed into their logic, you’re able to hand read them very well.

Spewy players are more difficult to hand read, but they also use logic. Their logic is just different than ours, since they let things like ego and “what’s my favorite hand?” cloud their reasoning. But at the end of the day, our goal is still to dial into their logic and attempt to figure out which hands they would play in a given situation.

Their logic is just different than ours.

Also, remember that thinking players use logical ranges preflop which makes it much easier to narrow their ranges down as we adhere to the first law (linear) and hand read on each street. Even good loose aggressive players use logic, so while their ranges can be quite wide, they are wide due to strategic gaps within their opponent’s game. Here are some quick examples:

• It’s not logical that a tight player flopped two pair on A62 after they raised from UTG
• It’s not logical that after a raise + 5 callers a good player would call from the BB with AA.
• It’s not logical that a good player would call a large 3bet OOP with 96o. But if it does happen, we adhere to the final law.

You Learn And You Adjust
Want to know a secret? Sometimes you are going to be massively wrong when hand reading. Yup. It’s true. You are going to assign a range for your opponent, you’re going to make a good play according to the range you assigned, and then villain is going to show up with a totally random hand that you never would have normally assigned him.

But don’t beat yourself up.

Rather, learn from the new information you received (since villain tabled their hand at showdown) and adjust your hand reading for that person in the future. If a player called a preflop raise with K7s, remember that and make sure to assign hands at least as weak as K7s in their range the next time they call your open.

If you keep these three laws in mind; the laws of linear, logical, and learning, it creates a solid framework for putting players on the right ranges. Without a great framework you are left guessing when hand reading, when the real goal is to be methodical and precise.