Exclusive Netbettor Texas Hold'em Article:

Player Profiling
Clocking Your Opponents

Yeah, it’s nice to be able to sit down at a hold ‘em table and actually draw a true ‘read’ on an opponent; it helps pad the bottom line, it gives you some respect at the table—in other words, it’s part of what makes the game so enjoyable. Unfortunately, if you play the way I do online, you just don’t have the time to put together an in-depth profile on an opponent. A typical night online finds me playing at least 4 tables at once; that means no fewer than 36 opponents, each of which is distinguished only by a cheesy avatar. Tables are popping up like mushrooms in front of you, hands are folded or raised in the blink of an eye... it’s chaos in there my friends, which means the absolute last thing you have time to do is construct an academic study on the finer points of your opponents’ playing styles.

But have no fear! As it turns out there’s usually only one thing you really need to know about an opponent, and that’s whether or not they play badly. Sure, the ‘live ones’ may exhibit some varying characteristics—some may raise too often, for example, or some may not value bet enough on the river, etc. etc.—but they all share one common trait; i.e., they have a tendency to get lost in a hand, and call too often when they should be folding (or, in some cases, raising).

Once you’ve determined that you’re up against a live one, your strategy becomes simple. You do almost no pure bluffing, and your semi-bluffs are largely restricted to those times when you have position on your opponent. You pump up your big flush and straight draws on the flop (at least when you have 2+ opponents), since you know your implied odds have hit the gong. And you virtually always bet good hands on the river.

Simple stuff, eh? Well, I agree. But the trick is knowing when you’re playing against true live ones, and when your opponents may actually possess a modicum of poker skill. If you’re playing in the zoo games on Party Poker, you can probably stop reading this now, since at least 90% of all your opponents will be playing a criminally poor brand of poker. On some sites, though, you may run across an occasional sharpie (this actually works in your favor in some games—a concept we’ll get to in a future article). Here we’ll look at a couple of the plays that good players virtually never make. These plays are easy to spot, and as a barometer of one’s skill level they’re almost always accurate. If you see one of your opponents making one of the following mistakes, smile and sit back and get ready to enjoy the game.

1. Calling multiple bets cold on the flop, then folding on the turn
Think about it. If you find yourself calling two—or three—bets on the flop, what’s your hand? It’s almost always a flush or straight draw, or occasionally a made hand which you’ve decided to keep the reins on until the turn. What it is not is a hand like 7 7 on a A Q 5 flop. Unless the board pairs, you’re taking on a hand that was worth two or three bets cold on the flop to the river. There are virtually no exceptions. Bad players, though, have no reservations about drawing for multiple bets with four or less outs, in the hopes of spiking a miracle on the turn. When someone calls a mitt full of bets on the flop, then quietly bows out when an innocuous card hits the turn, know that your playing against someone who’s prepared to donate.

2. Betting an unimproved ace-high hand on the river.
Here’s another one you see all the time. A guy raises pre-flop with AK, then gets treated to a flop of T 8 6. He bets into a field of four callers, and gets called in two spots. Turn is a J, he bets and both call. River is another 8—now he bets again.

The flop bet and turn bet are bad enough here. But the river bet is inexcusable. When you bet the river, you want one of two things to happen; either you want a better hand to fold (you’re bluffing), or you want a worse hand to call (you’re value betting). By betting an ace-high on the river, however, you’ve put yourself in the perverse situation where neither of these things will happen. Any pair that called the turn is going to call the river, so you know you can’t get a better hand to fold. Which means that any hand which does fold is necessarily worse than yours, thereby making your bet gratuitous (since you could have just checked it down for free). When you bet here you're giving your opponent one more big bet when he’s ahead, yet you aren’t going to collect from him when you’re ahead. If you think you have the best hand at the showdown with ace high, then you’re always better off checking and trying to induce a bluff. At least that way you collect something those times that your hand is still best.

3. Slowplaying monster hands on the flop in big, multi-way pots.
Bad idea here. Good players know that flopping a big hand isn’t worth a hill of beans if you don’t collect any money with it. As a result, they’ll usually get in there and start banging with huge hands on the flop if it appears that their opponents are pot stuck and can’t get away from their hands. Example: a good player, if she has 6 6 in the hole, will not be afraid to heat up the barrel when the flop comes 6 6 8 and there’s already been substantial pre-flop action. After all, why wait to start raising? Everyone’s coming along for the ride no matter what the price (assuming there was enough pre-flop action to tie everyone on to the pot), so you might as well make the price as high as possible. An unthinking player will look at this hand and think ‘Holy hell, I just flopped quads! I better ‘lay in the weeds’ so I don’t scare anyone out!’ A good player, in contrast, will think ‘I haven’t been able to get anyone out a pot in this game all night, and there’s no reason to think this hand will be any exception. Let’s try to build a monster pot right here on the flop, so that everyone will feel compelled to go to the river no matter how thin their draws are.’

These are three of the biggest ‘red flags’ that indicate your playing against someone who still has a lot to learn. There are more, but if you keep these three in mind you’ll be in good stead.

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Other Poker Strategy Articles:
Big Suited Connectors
Call or Three Bet?
The Pre-flop Raise in Early Position