How do you find out the game style of your opponent?

E

elusive

Rising Star
Silver Level
Joined
Feb 22, 2016
Total posts
15
Chips
0
Hi everyone, who reads this. I am beginner at poker and it's not yet time to start reading books about poker, I just read articles and manuals, but I haven't found any information on this question yet. So, I decided to ask you guys, cause you're more experienced than me.
Under my question I mean about bluffing, Tight Passive and Loose Passive styles, it's hard for me, when I play in cash games or tournaments.
 
starting_at_the_bottom

starting_at_the_bottom

Legend
Silver Level
Joined
Dec 9, 2012
Total posts
2,665
Awards
1
Chips
7
Erm...........by observing them
 
dj11

dj11

Legend
Silver Level
Joined
Oct 9, 2006
Total posts
23,189
Awards
9
Chips
0
Observation. Either live or online, after a while you will get a notion.

Maybe rather than focusing on a single player, just learn to observe everything. Shorty, very shortly probably, 1 or 2 players will alert you that they play different than the rest. Keep an eye on them. They will continue to reveal more stuff about themselves.

Keep in mind that you won't pick up a lot on any one person till you have played with them a long time. But you might pick up something useful for the game you are in.
 
Aaron Soto

Aaron Soto

Rock Star
Silver Level
Joined
Apr 21, 2015
Total posts
305
Chips
0
Listening, Observing and watching.
 
SBEP

SBEP

Rock Star
Platinum Level
Joined
Jan 23, 2016
Total posts
298
Chips
0
Bluffs are hard to spot some time, if they are done right, remember to pull of a bluff u have to sold it, to the other player from beginning to the end, great bluffs are hard to spot and swallow :D but if they are done poorly, your gut picks up on that, and u know something is not right with the way he/she has played the hand and u know that is highly likely they are bluffing, on top of that, there is no greater feeling calling a bluff when u r right, and feeling proud of yourself, at the same time, u send a message to other players "This could be you, dont try to bluff me, u wont make it" :D
 
arty220

arty220

Enthusiast
Silver Level
Joined
Feb 13, 2016
Total posts
73
Chips
0
Try to remember features of their game with the known hands. Maximum focus on the game.
 
3agp

3agp

Rising Star
Bronze Level
Joined
Feb 8, 2016
Total posts
4
Chips
0
Hold'em Manager to help you buddy)
 
E

elusive

Rising Star
Silver Level
Joined
Feb 22, 2016
Total posts
15
Chips
0
Thanks for your hints!
And what do I have to do if my opponents play only Strong hands, can I bluff on them or it's too risky?
 
PapaC

PapaC

Legend
Silver Level
Joined
Aug 30, 2010
Total posts
2,798
Chips
0
Hi elusive and welcome to Cardschat. I have to go along with what dj11 said. "Maybe rather than focusing on a single player, just learn to observe everything." Take your time, watch, and ask yourself a lot of questions. I used to play real fast on my part, and I still I hardly ever let the clock run down, but now I stop to think a few seconds even if I'm going to fold. It helps when you are learning. And no, it's not a good idea to bluff a tight player. And if you are new to the game, you should not even be trying many bluffs.
 
acidburnfx

acidburnfx

Senior apprentice
Loyaler
Joined
May 18, 2013
Total posts
4,836
Awards
16
BR
Chips
1,233
Hi elusive, welcome to CC! Well, to capture the standard of play is necessarily observe the behavior and the play of style of each player, besides, analyze and make notes through the hands of the player history.

Good luck at the tables.
 
dj11

dj11

Legend
Silver Level
Joined
Oct 9, 2006
Total posts
23,189
Awards
9
Chips
0
Hi everyone, who reads this. I am beginner at poker and it's not yet time to start reading books about poker, I just read articles and manuals, but I haven't found any information on this question yet. So, I decided to ask you guys, cause you're more experienced than me.
Under my question I mean about bluffing, Tight Passive and Loose Passive styles, it's hard for me, when I play in cash games or tournaments.

As I try to parse out this opening post (OP) I wonder:confused: It says the original poster (also OP) is a beginner, yet further on he mentions Tight passive and Loose passive as if he understands those concepts. Doesn't quite jive with 'beginner', or someone who is not ready to read books about poker.

I would highly suggest that for 20 or 50 thousand hands you concentrate only on getting those hands done. I also highly suggest you do that via play money games online. Many might argue that play money poker is not real poker. I will not argue that again.

To speed up the process, try a speed poker variant at whatever site you prefer. The only sites I know off who have speed pokers are Stars, Tilt and Bovada, but I think others also offer some version. And Tilt is being absorbed into Stars very soon.

But at this stage a beginner should be concentrating on getting a ton of hands under his belt. You can learn a lot by osmosis. I can see a decent reason to avoid poker books for a short while. Poker books are like most technical books. Everything will flow thru a mind without something to connect to. That's why you need those hands. To create a bare framework upon which you can hang the building experiences on. Don't wait too long to start the focused learning.

What the play money game has to offer is experience with every aspect of the game except scared money. The scared money of the game, and how to deal with it can only be experienced with real money poker. I have never read any argument anywhere that convinced me that learning poker from the git go with scared money was a good idea. In the beginning no one can even imagine what the scared money concept entails!

As for your ring or tourney question. There is little doubt that most players have a preference for one or the other. They do play differently, but not so much as some might think. The tourney version has more serious 'session' considerations than ring. Somewhere around 1 million hands your abilities might converge, but that might be dependent on how you do your focused learning.

Whatever you do early in your poker education, concentrate on observing the whole process. Like I said before, some situations will begin to stand out from the background noise sooner than you think.

Oh yeah, work on having fun while learning. Makes it all better.;)
 
Last edited:
John A

John A

Poker Zion Coach
Silver Level
Joined
Apr 12, 2012
Total posts
6,492
Awards
3
Chips
37
Start creating player profiles for yourself based on what you're observing. You should always be putting together an idea of how you think your opponents are playing and thinking about the game you're in so you can be one step ahead of them. It all comes w/ practice. There are some books and things that have player profiling. I have a free HUD that has a lot of this put together based on online poker stats.

But however you do it, you want to be assessing and creating an internal profile of who you think your opponents are. It just takes experience to be able to do this successfully. So you just need to play and keep that at the top of mind.
 
E

elusive

Rising Star
Silver Level
Joined
Feb 22, 2016
Total posts
15
Chips
0
dj11, I told that I've read some articles of basic knowledges about poker, so I can operate with that terms, but it doesn't mean I played a lot, I'd played for about 200-300 hands. I just know poker combinations, styles of playing and top10 start hands (have opened tab with them), but it doesn't help me to play better. So..my results forced me to create this topic and get some advices from people, who know much more than I do.

Thank to all of you! I'll handle this information and develop my strategy of playing.
 
dj11

dj11

Legend
Silver Level
Joined
Oct 9, 2006
Total posts
23,189
Awards
9
Chips
0
dj11, I told that I've read some articles of basic knowledges about poker, so I can operate with that terms, but it doesn't mean I played a lot, I'd played for about 200-300 hands. I just know poker combinations, styles of playing and top10 start hands (have opened tab with them), but it doesn't help me to play better. So..my results forced me to create this topic and get some advices from people, who know much more than I do.

Thank to all of you! I'll handle this information and develop my strategy of playing.

There is a peculiarity with any sort of technical learning. If I were to read a book on how to rebuild engines, without ever touching an engine, that book knowledge might be totally (or nearly totally) useless. Unless I were to go cement the new knowledge very shortly after digesting it, by rebuilding an engine.

A good Poker example might be Harrington on Holdem (Tournaments). I find that every time I pick it up, I learn something new. Usually it is like I never read it before! That is not a beginners book. I imagine that most of the stuff in those books (3 volumes total) would just fly over the heads of most folks who had no hands under their belts. Folks with 10K hands would recognize a lot of the situations he deals with, and folks with millions of hands will find other stuff.

You might be a savant, with total recall, I have no clue. But I would still think that without some frame of reference, most of what most noobs read just confuses them as much as anything. Getting a wide exposure to as many hands as you can (as fast as you can) will help build that scaffolding, upon which you can hang those many, many, many tidbits of info you will be gathering.

You could invest in a tracking program, those are nice memory aids, and serve a function not unlike copious note taking. Then they can do some fancy math and present you with stats about a wide variety of situations. Especially useful for self critique. Graphs too!

But it all boils down to observation. Either you are doing the observing, or a tracker is. With observation comes knowledge which help you make decisions.
 
E

elusive

Rising Star
Silver Level
Joined
Feb 22, 2016
Total posts
15
Chips
0
dj11, okay, I'll just have to play a lot of hands to learn it.
Know thy enemy and you will win. Sun Tzu :)
 
EXTREMUM

EXTREMUM

Enthusiast
Silver Level
Joined
Feb 17, 2016
Total posts
95
Chips
0
observation, follow patterns based on position - yours and theirs.
 
Dany_Style

Dany_Style

Rock Star
Silver Level
Joined
Feb 15, 2016
Total posts
117
Chips
0
I think if you have a history with a player sooner or later you will begin to read this opponent, but when you're in a tournament, they often moved from table to table, and players change, so watch what happens during the game, look how much often played by position, how often wants to see the flop, how many times does a continuation bet when you want to really minted hand, how much often fold after not hit the board, now if you sit in your home and do it on a table at home , Chez see that someone will win without even having the right cards so well is oriented towards recognizing and reading the opponent, I also have to learn, just share the information that I have read and apply the tables,sometimes when I read the bluff , bluff and respond to your opponent folds cards
 
TeUnit

TeUnit

Legend
Loyaler
Joined
Jan 20, 2009
Total posts
4,734
Awards
14
Chips
77
few ways to do this:
1. take notes
2. try things and see how the villans react
3. color code players by how they play
4. get a hud and have it auto rate players
 
E

elusive

Rising Star
Silver Level
Joined
Feb 22, 2016
Total posts
15
Chips
0
Dany_Style, yeah, it makes a real problem to observe the opponents' gaming, cause many players raise even with the weak hands, such as K-3 and when you've just been moved on you fold good hands, not top10, but also good and then..such good hands or better comes to you when your stack is low or even worse. I took the advice from poker advices for beginners to play with the strong hands only, but it's hard to win in the tournament by playing this strategy :(
 
E

elusive

Rising Star
Silver Level
Joined
Feb 22, 2016
Total posts
15
Chips
0
TeUnit, I read about hud, Holdem Manager 2, but it costs a money and I don't want to invest at early stages..
 
arbahool

arbahool

Visionary
Silver Level
Joined
Dec 19, 2015
Total posts
729
Chips
0
Thanks for your hints!
And what do I have to do if my opponents play only Strong hands, can I bluff on them or it's too risky?

poker isnt about bluffing,especially for begginers.Since you are relativly new to poker,you should focus on basics and play as many hands (tournaments) to improve your experience.Then with all that experience you should be able to recognize when is player trying to bluff.
 
E

elusive

Rising Star
Silver Level
Joined
Feb 22, 2016
Total posts
15
Chips
0
arbahool, thanks man, I've understood, that firstly I have to learn how to play it as a beginner, and then would be the buns:)
 
E

elusive

Rising Star
Silver Level
Joined
Feb 22, 2016
Total posts
15
Chips
0
I will summarize all you'd written in this topic for everyone, who will read it and just for myself, cause I'm going to reread it from time to time, just not to forget something.

So, at early stages you have to forget about such things as bluff and playing weak or doubtful hands. You have to observe your opponents and play only strong hands, only top10. And you have to play loads of games observing and learning what gamers do in different situations. Also it would be better to read some books about poker.

Thanks again to everyone, who participated in this thread, I'll have much practice:)
 
Roman Tsygankov

Roman Tsygankov

Rock Star
Silver Level
Joined
Mar 5, 2016
Total posts
229
Chips
0
Listening to them, observing them and reading specific literature( for example
Mike Caro’s Book of tells. The Body Language of Poker, The Psychology of Poker - Alan Schoonmaker.
 
Top 10 Games
Top