Playing Deceptively – Part 2: Reading Your Own Hand
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In Understanding Deception: Part 1 I introduced the notion of a deceptive strategy as opposed to a deceptive play. A slowplay by itself, for instance, cannot be deceptive because it is just one play. Indeed, if you slowplay habitually you will often end up with a strategy that is not deceptive at all.
A deceptive strategy is one that produces wide and balanced hand ranges for most common betting lines.
Most people don’t play deceptively. They play by a relatively simple set of rules and principles, and they often find themselves in situations where their opponents can know that they can never be bluffing, they can never have a strong hand, they can never have a drawing hand, and so forth.
As a simple example, many no-limit players virtually never three barrel bluff. If you never three barrel bluff, your strategy ends up being very straightforward every time you fire three times at a pot – you always have a strong made hand. This makes your range both narrow and unbalanced.
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Tags: bluffing, deception, deceptive play, hand ranges, Hand Reading, narrow ranges, no-limit-holdem, poker, range balancing, slowplaying, straightforward play, unbalanced ranges, wide ranges
Ed> “After nearly every decision, ask yourself, ‘What hands would I play this way?’”
This reminds me of a discussion I heard between Mike Sexton and Vince Van Patten on the WPT.
Mike> You know there are a lot of levels in poker. At the bottom level, you just play your own cards. At the next level, you think “what cards does my opponent have”. At the next level, its “what does he think I have”. Then there are even more levels, like “what does he think that I think…
Vince> Oh shut up Mike.