Talking about hands

Marcus Bateman / Marcus Bateman / 25 September 2009 / Leave a Comment

"Asking players to describe hands can give you a huge amount of information about the concepts they are familiar with..."

One of the best ways to try and identify weak players is to attempt to make them talk about how and why they played a hand. Poker is a game where a lot of factors need to be considered in each hand, and trying to talk to people about which factors they worry about can really help you dissect their game.

As an example of this, I was once playing in a live game where I struck up a conversation with an elderly gentleman at the table. He had been playing a relatively weak loose passive game while I had been there, and keen to see what he thought were important factors to consider in poker, I started a conversation about a hand he had played where he slow played kings and won a big pot against another player's straight flush draw that missed when they got it all in on the flop.

He thought he played the hand very well (personally I thought he played it horribly - getting 150 big blinds in on a board of 7c8c4s in a four way limped pot with kings is nearly always an extremely marginal play at best), and talked about the importance of trapping in hold'em, and of how no one knew if he was limping junk or good hands as his actions were always the same, and as a result he could just trap people on the flop. When I tried to ask him about other concepts about the hand, such as what the flop was like, or how many big blinds he would get it with kings there, he just looked at me blankly.

Just these few basic points quickly tell an enormous amount about his game. He had no real concept of board texture, as he seemed as happy to get the money in on any board with an over pair. He seemed to not be at all concerned about the number of big blinds in play, happy just to go all in on any flop with that type of hand (a huge weakness in big bet games, where in this spot you will nearly always be behind or flipping at best). He also prided himself on limping a lot, making him an easy target for constant isolations (his point about nobody knowing what hands he has when he limps is a very weak point - we know from the frequency of his limps that the majority of the time it is with junk simply because you can't always have good hands).

Good poker players talk about hands to include as many factors as possible. A speech like: 'A loose aggressive player with 200 big blinds, raised under the gun to 3x the big blind, I re-raised with ace ten suited from the button to 2.5x his raise because I was just as deep stacked and in position, but then a very tight player in the big blind shoved so I had to fold'; indicates that you are dealing with a vastly stronger player than someone who says things along the lines of: 'I raised aces and the flop was all low so I got it in and the guy had a set'.

Weak players love to simplify everything in poker, because ultimately they are not thinking about the game to the level necessary to win consistently. Asking players to describe hands can give you a huge amount of information about the concepts they are familiar with and the ones they are not, and this can be used to greatly improve your chances against them, as you simply take advantage of the areas that they do not understand.

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