Become a Master Hand Reader

2. Build an understanding and intuition for range and board interaction

I'm going to be straight with you: understanding range and board interaction is NOT for the faint of heart. It takes a lot of analysis and seeing range after range interacting with flop after flop to build this skill.

But, you will smoothly and efficiently learn this vital aspect of hand reading and better post-flop decisions.

See, most players just consider how their two hole cards interact with the board.

As a hand reader, though, you'll do more. You'll consider how your opponent's entire range interacts with the board and use this interaction to make a read on their likely hand strength to develop plays that exploit the situation.

For example, your tight opponent called in the small blind. You open-raised with 77 and the flop comes down 7s5s4h. The tight opponent check-raises 4x your continuation bet. Can he hold a straight to beat you?

Likely not; tight players don't call in the small blind with 86 nor 63. So, what could he be check-raising with? Possibly a weaker set like 55 or 44, or maybe a nut flush draw like AsTs or even an overpair like 99.

Knowing this, you should raise here for max value because your tight opponent would have a very hard time folding all of these strong hands especially after committing chips with an aggressive check-raise.

The downloadable spreadsheets and action steps will force you to analyze different ranges on different boards to build your understanding and intuition for range/board interaction, making you a stronger force to be reckoned with on-the-felt.

Using hand reading to improve your study efficiency is critical, but applying your skills in-game is the holy grail of hand reading.

Just imagine if you were able to visualize your opponent's range of hands preflop, and also narrow that range through the streets as you play the hand out.

Wouldn't you be an unstoppable poker shark?

For sure.

This would mean that you're no longer just playing your two hole cards in-game, but instead, using range thinking and all the information available to "play the player" with every pot you enter.

You'll build better reads on the strength of your opponent's hand and make exploitative plays to earn more than your "fair share" of chips and pots.

The work you've done on the last two topics will set you up for in-game hand reading success here. And the downloadable range cheatsheets will help you visualize your opponent's ranges as soon as they enter a pot against you.