Hand Reading Lab

Flopzilla | ‘The Hand Reading Lab’ Part 3 | Podcast #68

By Sky Matsuhashi on May 31, 2016 3

Today I teach you about the most valuable hand analysis tool available, Flopzilla, and how it’s revolutionized my poker game and my hand reading skills.

In episode 66 I taught you basic hand reading, and how understanding percentage form can lead to assigning more accurate pre-flop ranges.

Flopzilla and H.A.N.D. Reading

Podcast Mission (4:25)

My mission for today is to teach you the benefits that I’ve gained from using Flopzilla as well as show you how I use it for the very specific task of hand reading an opponent.

How has Flopzilla benefited my game? (5:00)

Range Visualization

Constant use of Flopzilla has helped me to better visualize ranges. I’m able to conjure in my mind what a 5% or 15% or 30% range looks like. With the ability to visualize ranges, I have a better idea of what my opponents are likely playing given their pre-flop actions, and I can keep this range in my thoughts longer as the hand progresses.

And I’m so much better with the percentage form (episodes 60 & 66) now because of Flopzilla. This is a key skill for online players who use HUD’s which relate info to you in %-form, but it helps LIVE players as well. If you’d estimate a player opens the BTN 30% of the time, or your HUD stat tells you as much, you know he’s likely opening any pp, A5s and A8o or better, every suited 8+ and every off-suit 9+, and 54s+ and 64s+.

Range & Board Interaction

Until I used Flopzilla I had no idea how to calculate how often a range of hands hit a board. How often does the 30% range above hit a JT7r board? By “hitting the board” I mean TP+, an oesd or pair+draw. The answer is 50%.

The reason this hits so frequently is b/c the 30% range consists of lots of broadway and middle cards which of course hits this type of board.

Practice like this has helped me to see the type of boards that different ranges hit strongly, which helps me to avoid costly flop cbets or c/r or donk bets that won’t elicit the fold I’m looking for.

Future Cards & Effects on Equity

Another great aspect of Flopzilla is seeing how different flops affect equities, but also what future cards can do to it. AA vs the 30% range and the JT7r flop has 74% equity. But that equity drops to 72% on a turn Q, but increases to 81% on a turn 3.

Now, we all know that future cards can be good for us or our opponent, but we often don’t think about it in a hand. But, working with Flopzilla gets you to start thinking about this stuff more often, which helps you to develop plans for future cards. If you know what helps your range and hurts your opp’s on the next street, or vice versa, you can make plans for the cards that come.

Counting Combos

So I talk a lot about %’s and percentage form in studying poker. But Flopzilla does something really cool by displaying ranges and statistics in combo form. For example, that 30% range consists of 281 combos once we remove the board cards and our AA. Hitting the flop is 53% of the time, which is 148 hands. And, for lots of people, these hard numbers are easier for them to understand.

Looking at analyses in combo form helps us to spot huge frequency issues in our game. Let’s say we get to the flop with a player, we cbet 90 combos of hands we have, but he c/shoves and we only call his c/shove with sets. Well, for any non-paired flop there are only 9 combos of sets, which means we’re only calling 9 out of 90 combos or only 10% of the time. His c/shove only needs to work 50% or less, but it’s working 90% of the time. He’s printing money by shoving 100% of the time vs us in this spot.

Finding and correcting these frequency issues can plug many holes in our game.

Utilizing the Statistics & Filters

The statistics section allows you to narrow the range as you progress in the hand. Within the statistics section it will show you the % of the range that hit a specific hand, whether it’s a TP, set, fd, no made hand, whatever. You can begin to narrow down the range by filtering for these specific hands.

So, with the 30% range, JT7r example, and we’ve got AA, let’s say our opp only continues beyond the flop with TP+, an oesd and pair + draw.

Well, we see he only continues with 148 combos of his original range. The software removes hands from his range that don’t meet the criteria we set. I’m sure you can see how valuable this aspect of Flopzilla is to hand reading. You don’t have to mark hands off on a piece of paper or painstakingly consider each one in Pokerstove and manually remove them from the matrix.

Here’s SplitSuit’s incredible video called “How to Use Flopzilla” embedded.

How can I use Flopzilla to practice hand reading an opponent? (14:50)

H.A.N.D. Reading is: History, Assign, Narrow and Destroy! (episode 66)

Podcast Challenge (24:50)

Here’s my challenge to you for this episode: If you’ve got Flopzilla already, do some hand reading practice with showdown hands you’ve played and that you don’t remember. See how accurate you are in your final assessment of the opponent’s range. If you don’t have Flopzilla yet, either get the ‘Hand Reading Lab’ that comes with a license to use Flopzilla with my offer code “smart” or go to www.Flopzilla.com to download it for a free 7 day trial and do some hand reading practice on the house.

Purchase the Hand Reading Lab with my affiliate offer code

I got the ‘Hand Reading Lab’ and it’s the best poker course I’ve ever experienced and I truly feel it’s worth every penny.

The course contains everything you need to master the skill and art of hand reading:

27 videos
Powerful Guides and Exercises
A 2-hour Hand Reading Webinar
A Hand Reading LIVE Tags video from Red Chip Poker
A Flopzilla License
A set of custom Flopzilla Ranges to help you hand read opponents and use Flopzilla successfully

Click here and use my affiliate offer code “smart” at checkout to get the Hand Reading Lab course and these two additional bonuses:

Splitsuit’s popular ‘Playing 3bet Pots’ video series
Entry into my Hand Reading Webinar on July 9th at 10am Pacific (just send me your HRL purchase confirmation)

Contact Me

Please leave any CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK, COMMENTS, QUESTIONS or REQUESTS in the comments section below.

Or… Tweet me @SmartPokerStudy.

Join the Facebook Poker Discussion Group to talk all things poker.

You can find the podcast in iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play Music and your favorite podcast app.

Up Next…

In episode #69, I’ll answer 3 superb listener Q’s. And next week, in episode #70, I’ll continue the HRL series and I’ll discuss thinking about your own ranges and creating them based on different scenarios like your responses to 3bets or what range you’d continue with vs a flop cbet.

Until next time, study smart, play much and make your next session the best one yet.

Percentage Form | ‘The Hand Reading Lab’ Part 2 | Podcast #66

By Sky Matsuhashi on May 24, 2016 1

I teach you hand reading using my H.A.N.D. acronym, and how understanding percentage form can lead to better hand reading by assigning more accurate pre-flop ranges.

In episode 64 I kicked off the ‘Hand Reading Lab’ series by teaching you why paying attention to showdowns is absolutely vital in gaining reads on your opponents and improving your hand reading skills.

H.A.N.D. Reading and Percentage Form

Podcast Mission (3:30)

My mission for today is to teach you the basic steps of hand reading through my H.A.N.D. acronym. I’ll also dive into what percentage form is and how it is a crucial part of hand reading. Take the time right now to answer these questions for yourself before we get to the meat of the today’s podcast:

What steps are involved in hand reading?
How can percentage form help with hand reading?

The H.A.N.D. Reading Steps (4:05)

Hand reading is the skill of deducing what our opponent has, and we use this info to exploit our opponent. Hand reading is about putting him on a range of hands, not a single hand. A range of hands is a set of hands that your opponent could be holding based on his actions up to this point. Your job is to narrow that range as the hand progresses, assess the overall strength of the range in relation to the board, and choose plays that exploit this range.

To help you with hand reading, I created a nifty little acronym for H.A.N.D. that outlines the four steps to hand reading: History, Assign, Narrow and Destroy (or Ditch).

History

HISTORY is comprised of all the things you know about the opponent you’re up against and what this type of player is generally capable of at your stakes. Here are some questions to ask yourself to help you understand your opponent:

What have I seen him show down in the past?
How does he generally play his big hands and his weaker hands?
What type of player is he? LAG, TAG, LP or TP?
How does he view me, and can this view affect his pre-flop decisions?

Assign

Now that you’ve taken your history with the opponent into account, you need to make some assumptions and ASSIGN a range of hands based on what you know and his pf actions. This range can be as narrow or as wide as you think it should be. As a simple example, you were 3bet pre-flop by TAG Player A. He’s got a narrow range, maybe something like QQ+ and AK. But LP Player B on a different hand just called your open raise from the BB. He might have 22-TT, most Aces, all broadways, suited connectors and suited gappers and decent off-suit connectors like 65o or 86o. This is a super wide range.

A key concept that you need to keep in mind with making assumptions and hand reading is that you’re going to be wrong quite often, just expect it and accept it. I’ll say this again, you’ll be wrong quite often. This happens when you’re making assumptions.

When assigning a pf range, you can easily be mistaken. You think this TAG player will always re-raise w/AA, but then he surprises you on the flop with his flopped top set. This other TP player would never call w/75, but then he shows up with a turned straight to KO you from the tourney. And this ultra-nit would never 3bet 77, but you fold your 99 and he shows you the semi-bluff. Players can show up with anything. But like I said in episode #64 about learning from showdowns, learn from these mistakes will help you better range them and others like them in the future.

As you learn about your opponent, you’ll use any new info to hone your future assumptions. So, when you make a mistake, just accept it and don’t beat yourself up. When you lose, so what? Losing and being wrong is part of poker. Incorporate what you’ve learned from this mistake and move forward. Don’t let it tilt you because no matter what you’re going to be wrong quite often, it’s what you do with the info you gain from the mistake that will set you apart from your opponents and will take your hand reading game to the next level.

Narrow

Now that we’ve assigned a pre-flop range, it’s time to NARROW that range through the streets. You do this based on the opponent’s actions. It takes practice, and one of the best ways to do this is through hand history reviews. Here’s a few recommended ways to do this for online and LIVE players:

Online – choose hands that went to showdown over a month ago (just filter in your software for hands that went to showdown) and go through them one at a time. Take your history and the player type into account, assign a range, then narrow it as the hand progresses. Record your progress and make notes of hands that fell outside your assigned range and the reason why you made the mistake. Each time you practice hand reading, take out your list and read down your mistakes and reasons why, then begin your hand reading practice. Over time you’ll get better at it.
LIVE – using your own hands played to study is a bit challenging because you’re probably only taking notes on important hands, and these hands will often be easy to recall even studying months down the line. That’s why I recommend hitting up forums where players post hands without the results. You’ll often find hands where the poster gives you some reads on the villain in the hand, you get to see the action through each street, and get to comment on what you think of these hands. Use these as hand reading opportunities. The poster might ask something like, “Was my 3bet pre good?” or “Should I call this river bet?” Go ahead and answer the question, as well as give your final assessment of the player’s range. Check back later to see if your read was correct. The more you do this, the better you’ll get at hand reading and you can start applying this to your LIVE sessions.
Both – practice hand reading as you play one table at a time. This is obvious for LIVE players as you can only play one table, but for online players try a focus session where you just play one table and your goal is to range every player involved in every hand. We all know we often zone out or focus on something else when we’re not involved in a hand. Well, your goal for hand reading is to stay focused on every hand played, regardless of you being involved or not. Put the players on ranges and narrow them as the streets progress. The more you practice this, the better you’ll get at hand reading and narrowing ranges.

Destroy (or Ditch)

DESTROY your opponents with exploitative plays based on the hand reading you’ve done up to this point and the likely strength of their hand. If you’ve hand read properly and put them on an accurate pre-flop range and narrowed their range based on actions and the board cards, you can implement the strategy you think would best yield a fold if you’re bluffing or a call or raise if you’re going for value.

Of course, your hand could be beat and maybe you can’t destroy your opponent with a well-timed bluff nor can you go for value. In this case you’ve got to DITCH the hand. Some people might not consider folding as an exploitative play, but if you’re able to ditch a hand like TPWK when you know your opponent is stronger and just won’t fold, then you’ve saved yourself money thru your hand reading.

The more you practice hand reading, the better you’ll become at either destroying your opponents with well-placed bets, or ditching hands and saving yourself money.

How can percentage form help with hand reading? (13:15)

(listen to podcast #60 for more on percentage form)

Percentage form helps to assign a pre-flop range. This is especially useful for online play, but with a little estimating it can be useful for LIVE play as well.

If your online opponent has a RFI stat of 20% in the CO, this means he plays 20% of hands, which is usually the strongest or top 20% of hands within the hand matrix:

If you’re playing LIVE and you’d estimate a player is playing 4 out of every 10 hands in a certain spot, then he’s playing 40% of hands, which is much wider than the 20% range. This is the starting range you’d give your opponent pre-flop based on either the stats presented to you or your estimate of how often a player will play this way.

We start with the % of hands they play, then assign a range using this along with our history with them and their actions pre-flop.

This use of the percentage form helps us to be more accurate, logical and technical players. This is what the HUD gives us, the % of how often somebody does something, which corresponds to the range of cards they do it with. Without a HUD, we just need to make an estimate of their range then we narrow their range street by street the same way we would online.

For more accuracy using %-form, we need to know what hands are included in different ranges. Is AK within a 5% range? Absolutely. But is ATs within that 5% range? Probably not due to its weakness. Is that same ATs within a 10% range? Sure, but is ATo? Once again, probably not due to the weakness of the off-suit nature of it. This is key in using percentage form, knowing what hands fall within different % ranges. You can learn this through constant practice and thought about ranges and doing hand ranging practice away from the tables. With enough practice, it will become second nature to you.

Percentage form also helps us understand the type of player we’re up against as well. If you’re up against a player who plays only 10% of hands or less, then that’s a nitty player and his range would reflect this and would be full of all strong hands. If he plays 30% or more, he’s quite a bit looser and would have many weak hands in his range.

Percentage form can help you estimate 3bet and cold call ranges as well. If he three bets only 1% of the time (or 1 out of every 100 hands) then you know he only does so with AA & KK. If he cold calls 20% of the time (2 out of every 10), you know he’s got a pretty wide range, but the strongest hands like QQ+ and AQ+ are prolly not in it.

If you can get practice in using percentage form and correlating it with an actual range of hands, you’ll be doing much better than all of your opponents.

Podcast Challenge (16:45)

Here’s my challenge to you for this episode: Practice learning percentage form. When you know that 5% of hands is 77+ and AK, or that 20% of hands is all pp’s, all broadways and 65s+, then you’ll be a much stronger hand reader. Start up your favorite poker calculating software like Flopzilla or Pokerstove or Equilab, and make a list of all the hands that fall under each % category: 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50 and 60%. Commit to memorizing these and practice it in your hand history reviews or when you’re actually at the poker table. If you can get these down, you’ll be far more accurate hand reader than your competition… “I guarantee it.”

Purchase the Hand Reading Lab with my affiliate offer code

I got the Hand Reading Lab and it’s the best poker course I’ve ever experienced and I truly feel it’s worth every penny.

The course contains everything you need to master the skill and art of hand reading:

27 videos
Powerful Guides and Exercises
A 2-hour Hand Reading Webinar
A Hand Reading LIVE Tags video from Red Chip Poker
A Flopzilla License
A set of custom Flopzilla Ranges to help you hand read opponents and use Flopzilla successfully
Plus a special bonus from me

Click here and use my affiliate offer code “smart” at checkout to get the Hand Reading Lab course and these two additional bonuses:

Splitsuit’s popular ‘Playing 3bet Pots’ video series
Entry into my Hand Reading Webinar on July 9th at 10am Pacific (just send me your HRL purchase confirmation)

Contact Me

Please leave any CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK, COMMENTS, QUESTIONS or REQUESTS in the comments section below.

Or… Tweet me @SmartPokerStudy.

Join the Facebook Poker Discussion Group to talk all things poker.

You can find the podcast in iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play Music and your favorite podcast app.

Up Next…

In podcast #67, I’ll answer 3 listener Q’s about what beginning players should understand about poker, using a HUD on Bovada and the subject matter of my future eBoook and other exclusive content. And next week, in episode #68, I’ll continue the ‘Hand Reading Lab’ series and I’ll discuss how Flopzilla, which comes with the HRL, has revolutionized not only my study time but my hand reading skills as well.

Until next time, study smart, play much and make your next session the best one yet.

Learning From Showdowns | ‘The Hand Reading Lab’ Part 1 | Podcast #64

By Sky Matsuhashi on May 17, 2016 1

I teach you why paying attention to showdowns is absolutely vital in gaining reads on your opponents and improving your hand reading skills.

Learning from Showdowns

Podcast Mission (8:40)

My mission for today is to teach you the importance of hand reading and to discuss the what, the why and the how of hand reading. And I’ll dive into why paying attention to showdowns is vitally important in developing your hand reading skills. Take the time right now to answer these questions for yourself before we get to the meat of the today’s podcast:

What’s so important about hand reading?
How can showdowns help?

What’s so important about hand reading? (9:15)

Hand reading is the skill of deducing what our opponent has, and we use this info to exploit our opponent.

There’s a common misconception about hand reading, that it’s about putting our opponent on a single hand. That’s not the case at all, it’s about putting him in a range of hands. A range of hands is a set of hands that your opponent could be holding based on his actions up to this point. Your job is to narrow that range as the hand progresses, assess the overall strength of the range in relation to the board, and choose plays that exploit this range.

Hand reading forces you to pay attention to the action.

Basic hand reading starts like this: at the pre-flop stage, you assign a range of hands based on your opponent’s actions. So of course, an open limper will have a much weaker and wider range than a 3bettor pre-flop. You take this range of hands to the flop, and based on the board and the opp’s actions, you can lop some hands off that range, thereby narrowing it. As a quick example, you raised pre and the opponent just called. The flop comes AKQr and the opponent check-calls your cbet here. What hands can we remove from his range? Assuming he’s not capable of an OOP float, I think we can safely remove pp’s below 9’s and all the baby suited connectors and gappers as well. Next we do this on the turn and ultimately the river, removing hands from the range based on the opp’s actions, and hopefully making exploitive plays along the way based on our reads.

An important aspect of hand reading is that you’ll often be incorrect when doing it, but don’t let this discourage you. The reason you’ll be incorrect a lot is because we start the hand reading process by putting our opponent on a pre-flop range based on a set of assumptions about our opponent.

One of the great things about hand reading is that it’s a skill you can practice off the table, and the more off-the-table practice you put in the better you’ll become at it. I found that after completing SplitSuit’s course, and doing lots of off-the-table practice, my mind just naturally goes into hand reading mode whether I’m involved in a hand or not. I’ve found that I’m a much more logical and deliberate player because of it.

Ultimately, poker is a game of incomplete information. We fill these gaps in information by logically deducing what cards our opponent is most likely to have, and we use that info to exploit them. This is why hand reading is so important.

How can showdowns help? (11:50)

In the 4^th video of the Hand Reading Lab, SplitSuit makes a comment on the importance of showdowns and how his eyes are always glued to the table at every one b/c he uses these to learn as much as possible about his opp’s tendencies.

Every SD is our chance to confirm our pre-flop and street by street range assumptions. By showdown, let’s say we narrow our opponent’s range down to TT+, AJ+ and KQ. If his showdown hand was AQ, then great, we ranged correctly. His final hand fell within the range we assigned him. But what if he ended up having K9o?
Remember that I said our hand reading will often be incorrect due to some assumptions we make. But knowing what our opponent is capable of by seeing exactly what they had at SD, that will help us in future hands vs this opponent. Now that we’ve seen K9o, we can maybe widen the pre-flop range we assign, or allow him to continue with weaker hands vs post-flop action.

There are 5 areas where SD’s help us get a read on our opp’s and they are:

Player mentality
- Showdowns tell us how loose or tight and how passive or aggressive a player is. For example, it’s important to know if player A raised on the flop w/ a gs and one overcard, we know he’s capable of semi-bluffing and aggressive play. Or, if player B shows up w/AA after just calling a 3bet pre-flop, we know he likes to slow-play and trap his opponents. And if player C just called pre-flop w/KQ, then called down each street w/TP, we know he’s on the more passive side. If he ever wakes up with aggression we know he has a really strong hand.
Actions on each street
- Showdowns allow us to see exactly what the opponent had when they made the play they did on each street. This helps us range the opponent in future hands b/c we saw what he was capable of doing based on his hand strength at the time.
Sequence of actions
- A sequence of actions is the combination of plays we make as the hand plays out street by street. Maybe it’s check, check, bet; or maybe check, check/raise, donk lead, or even flop cbet, check-back the turn, then river bet. By seeing how he responded or acted street by street, we can get an idea of how he’ll play future hands in similar situations.
Bet sizing
- SD’s give us plenty of insight into what bet sizing meant on the prior streets. Bet sizing tells can let us know when an opponent is bluffing or going for value. When we see a showdown, and look back at the bet sizing used in conjunction with the hand strength at that time, we get a good idea of how to judge future bet sizings.
Opponent’s understanding of position
- SD’s can show us how our opp views position. Some players rely on position to allow them to attempt more bluffs when their opponent’s show weakness, other players play the same pre-flop range regardless of position (either very loose or very tight).

Now, seeing the showdown is one thing, but paying attention to the street by street action and using a SD to analyze the action is another. Online players have it easy b/c of the built in hand-replayer that the software has, but LIVE players will have to practice this.

I can just hear some of you now, “I can never remember the pre-flop action when it finally gets to SD.”

Your first step is getting away from this kind of negative scripting. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy when you say crap like this. Don’t say to yourself, “I can’t remember the street by street action.” Instead, say to yourself with each hand dealt, “Now it’s time for me to practice my street by street analysis of my opponents.” Using positive affirmations like this will subconsciously work its way into your thoughts and you’ll slowly change your outlook on your abilities.

To improve my skills, I used street by street narration of the hand like I was Mike Sexton.

“Seat 5 opened, BTN call, seat 5 cbet 1/2pot, BTN raised and seat 5 re-shoved. At showdown seat 5 had a set of 5’s and played it for value, the BTN had top 2 on the flop w/J9o and thought he was playing for value as well.”

This kind of narration helps you remember the action. A couple player notes I could make to help with future hand reading is “seat 5 vbet 1/2pot w/flopped set” and “BTN called pre w/J8o.”

Showdowns are the best way for us to confirm our pre-flop and street by street assumptions of the opponent’s range. Pay attention to every showdown and let the showdowns paired with their actions inform the way you view your opponent. Take notes on what your opponents are capable of, and use these notes to exploit them as you range them down the streets in the future.

Podcast Challenge (23:00)

Here’s my challenge to you for this episode: Pay attention to every showdown you see in your next session and for the rest of the week. Your goal is to learn at least one thing from each showdown about how your opponents play their hands, and to take a note each time. The more you practice this, the better you’ll get at remembering the street by street action and using what you learn to exploit your opponents in future hands.

Purchase the Hand Reading Lab with my affiliate offer code

I got the Hand Reading Lab and it’s the best poker course I’ve ever experienced and I truly feel it’s worth every penny.

The course contains everything you need to master the skill and art of hand reading:

27 videos
Powerful Guides and Exercises
A 2-hour Hand Reading Webinar
A Hand Reading LIVE Tags video from Red Chip Poker
A Flopzilla License
A set of custom Flopzilla Ranges to help you hand read opponents and use Flopzilla successfully
Plus a special bonus from me

Click here and use my affiliate offer code “smart” at checkout to get the Hand Reading Lab course and these two additional bonuses:

Splitsuit’s popular ‘Playing 3bet Pots’ video series
Entry into my Hand Reading Webinar on July 9th at 10am Pacific (just send me your HRL purchase confirmation)

Contact Me

Please leave any CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK, COMMENTS, QUESTIONS or REQUESTS in the comments section below.

Or… Tweet me @SmartPokerStudy.

Join the Facebook Poker Discussion Group to talk all things poker.

You can find the podcast in iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play Music and your favorite podcast app.

Up Next…

In podcast #65, I’ll answer 3 listener Q’s from YOU! And next week, in episode #66, I’ll continue the ‘Hand Reading Lab’ series and discuss using %-form in hand reading.

Until next time, study smart, play much and make your next session the best one yet.