It’s completely obvious to you that one player has the nuts, for instance. And you watch, fascinated, as another player bets into the nut hand with NO outs. To compound the error, the player who is drawing dead now calls a raise on the river to lose even more money.
Before the winner is turned over, you mentally call the winning hand to yourself, and are not at all surprised when the two cards you expected to see are revealed.
Why are hands so easy to read when you’re NOT involved? Good question!
Why are they so hard to read when you have YOUR money in the pot? Another good question.
Poker is a game of mistakes. The player who makes the least misjudgments, misreads and downright DUMB plays is most likely to go home with the cash.
I’m going to give you an exercise that is quite advanced for a change. Every once in a while you should be given a chance to go to another level of play. If you are like most players (myself included), you won’t be able to complete this exercise for long. At best you’ll only be able to manage a few minutes of the exercise before failing.
Here is what I want you to do. One...