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Of late I have been preoccupied with the importance of hand ranges in my game.  Everyone hollers about how important they are but I admit my mental laziness is akin to Obama’s bowling prowess.  I didn’t even make it to the Stump Olympics.  I have decided that now is the time for action.  I intend to better this part of my game to the fullest and I want to invite you on the hunt…So you’ve got bottom set on a three-flush board and your opponent just check-raised you all-in. What do you do? Well, you put your opponent on a hand.

Hand reading is simultaneously the most important and the most difficult thing that a poker player does. Some of the best poker players in the world who ignore many (or all!) of those other “rules” in poker, have deadly-accurate hand reading skills, and make mountains of cash for their troubles. Other players are exquisitely good at all the fundamentals but stink at hand reading and therefore struggle to consistently come out on top.

I began reading on the subject and the first wonderful thought came from Eric “Rizen” Lynch.  I like this approach.

“Have you ever wondered what exactly someone could possibly be thinking about when it’s taking him seemingly forever to make a decision during a hand? As much as some of us pros would like you to believe we’re simply “looking into your souls,” what we’re really doing is quite simple and basic, even if it is just a little counterintuitive to how we’re used to thinking away from poker.

Rather than a top-down approach, when you’re dealing with key decisions in a poker hand, it’s very beneficial to think in a back-to-front manner. What I mean by that is that if you are faced with a tough decision, you need to reconstruct the hand and the action in your head from the beginning to the current point, using each street’s action as a chance to narrow down your opponent’s hand range. With a little practice and some thought, it’s quite spooky how good a hand reader you can become if you can simply adopt this way of thinking.

Not only is this thought process important for trying to figure out what your opponent has, but if you’re playing against a thinking opponent, you can often use it on your own hand in determining if a bluff might work.”  Eric Lynch

This point of backwards analyses is used by many pros and makes sense to our brains as we must account for everyones moves.  Ted (Professor Backward) Forrest enjoys its use and credits it with recent positive results in both tournaments and cash game play.