I subscribe to Swedish “Poker Magazine,” which comes out bi-monthly. In the latest edition, they have a column written by CardPlayer Magazine writer Barry Tanenbaum. I’m not sure, but I would venture to guess that this is a syndicated column; they also feature columns written by other internationally acclaimed poker players/writers, which seems like an awful lot of attention for a small edition Swedish magazine, otherwise.

Either way, in this particular column, Mr. Tanenbaum talks about hand reading, and using logic to deduce your opponent’s most likely holding. I like the topic, but I strongly disagree with his example, or at least the way he suggests the hand should be played based on our hand reading:

In this example, our hero is holding AsKs. The player to his right is described as a tight professional (actually, I’m not sure if “tight” is the appropriate English translation, the Swedish adjective also has the meaning of “careful”, for what that’s worth), and this pro considers hero to be a “tricky professional who’s hard to read.”

The tight pro raised preflop and our hero 3-bets with his big slick. So far so good, except that Barry doesn’t mention our absolute position, which would have been good to know if we’re working on hand reading. Everyone else folds though, and our opponent just calls our 3-bet. The flop comes Qc-7s-4s, our opponent checks and we bet. He calls.

The turn comes Ad, and our opponent bets out. We raise, and he calls. The river is the 7h. Our opponent checks. What hands, asks Barry Tanenbaum, should we figure our opponent to have and what should be our next action?

“I hope you answered AK since that is by far his most probable holding,” says Mr. Tanenbaum (if my translation back to English is identical to his original text, I don’t know, but I’m doing the best I can). He then explains our opponent’s range preflop to be, AK/AQ and mostly 10-10 to AA. This makes me suspect that our opponent open-raised from early position in a full ring game, which could have been a useful bit of information, but I can forgive him for that. I can agree that AK is a likely holding (his reasoning included more thoughts about the flop and turn, but they don’t really matter for what I want to say).

But I cannot forgive him for suggesting that we check behind this river, which he states is an “obvious choice.” No, that’s a terrible choice. We absolutely cannot afford not to value bet this river, despite his insistence that we’re “most likely splitting the pot.” Yeah, and if we are splitting, a bet wouldn’t cost us anything. But there are plenty of worse hands that will call us here, the most obvious one being A-J (which is far from an unrealistic hand - even tight pros get out of line sometimes), and various other hands.

I also think the hand played out oddly for an AK. Donking when he hit his out? Why not checkraise? Why not 3-bet?

I don’t know of any hands that we lose to that would have played the way he did. Surely not AA, QQ, 7-7 and 4-4, A-7 and A-Q, which are the only hands that beat us. Compare that to various versions of A-J, A-T that WOULD play this way, even if it meant that our rigid, tight pro actually got out of line with a preflop raise and made a loose peel on the flop. It’s not like it ever happens - in fact, I’m often surprised to see what supertight players sometimes decide to raise with preflop. If you have a tight image, you may as well exploit it - no?

I hate checking behind this river even based on this read. If he was planning on checkraising us, he would have done it on the turn.

That is all.