4 Common Postflop Plays That Give Away Your Hand
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If you haven’t done so already, also check out 4 Common Preflop Plays That Give Away Your Hand.
Hand reading is one of the toughest skills for many aspiring poker players. It’s easy to read a book and learn about pot odds, learn about playing aggressively, and so forth. But many players, especially many new players, are lost at sea when it comes to hand reading. They don’t even know where to start.
A lot of hand reading is deductive reasoning coupled with thousands of hands worth of observation with a little psychology thrown in. In other words, it’s a fairly complex process. But some hand reading is pleasantly simple.
The most simple form is the “giveaway” where your opponent does one thing that’s just a dead giveaway about what they have. You may not be able to nail it down to two exact cards, but you can narrow their range enough that you can really take advantage.
Every player performs a “giveaway” once in a while, but the inexperienced and amateur players you’ll find in your local $1-$2 NL game or home game probably do them all the time. Obviously, every player is different, but here are four common postflop “giveaways” that I see and exploit a lot while I play.
(Note: These are merely common threads that I see in a lot of players. Some players play completely differently. If I say, “This sequence means a weak hand,” it will be true only against some, or perhaps most, opponents. Eventually you’ll run across a player who will do it with a strong hand. There’s no substitute for observation, and there are no guarantees in hand reading.)
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Tags: bluffing, call-reraise, cbet, continuation-bet, giveaways, Hand Reading, monster-hands, monsters, no-limit-holdem, pocket-aces, pocket-pairs, poker, postflop
Hi Ed,
nice article. The give-up-on-the-turn line is pretty popular over at 2+2, where its called the stack-a-donk. Its used when you flop a monster OOP against an opponent who will bet when checked to on the turn. You bet the flop and then c/r the turn big. It helps to prevent people from stealing if you check the turn.