Rating Opponents
Online
Understanding how your opponent
plays and more importantly how good they are, early in a session
can give you a massive edge and a fantastic advantage on how to
exploit them. The quicker you can do so, the faster you can make
money from them. Throughout this article we will be looking at;
online: HEM stats, level of thinking, aggression, awareness,
position and VPIP.
HEM Stats
Holdem Manager is a fantastic
tool that allows you to track and record all the poker hands you
play at the virtual felt. It takes this data and transmits them
into stats of which you can dissect at your pleasure.
Having stats on your opponents
will immediately give you an indication as to how they are playing
and what kind of style they are trying to adopt. It will make
spotting any weaknesses they have a lot easier, whilst saving you
precious time at the tables.
However, it’s important that
you learn how to interpret these stats before using them as a
concrete base to rate a player. Many stats require thousands if not
tens of thousands of hands to gain an accurate reading.
Level of
thinking
Each opponent will have a
certain thinking level of which they will make their plays
accordingly. The lower the thinking levels the more mistakes the
player is likely to make. Obviously if we rate a player as say a
level 1 thinker, then this is a someone who is going to be a poor
player an one in which we want to target.
We need to make sure that we
adjust our plays for each thinking level. The more capable the
player the harder it’s going to become to exploit them, compared
to that of a low level thinker.
As a general rule of thumb, low
level thinkers are players that we rarely want to bluff into as
they will just call with a wide range of hands. The best thing to
do is be patient and value bet them as they will call you down very
light and with a lot of junk.
Mid level players are where we
can open up our bluffing range considerably. These players will
often tend to back off in the face of aggression so become easy
targets to getting them to fold.
High level players are ones we
want to mainly stay out of the way of, but if we do get into
confrontations make sure we have a decent holding. These guys will
take the average poker player to bits as their poker knowledge will
be of a considerable level in comparison.
Aggression
Aggressive players in general
tend be of a reasonable level and should be approached with
caution. However, they can become extremely exploitable if they
don’t balance their ranges meaning we can take advantage of these
flaws.
Before you enter a pot with an
aggressive player you must be willing to play a big pot. Their
aggressive tendencies means that they are going to put you under a
fair amount of pressure at some point in the hand, so you best be
prepared with a holding that you can defend with.
If a player shows no aggression
in hands then it’s going to be easy to take chips from them just
by applying a little aggression ourselves. These players are likely
not going to be very big winners (if at all) in the games so we
should be targeting these people and getting involved.
An aggressive player usually
has at least a reasonable amount of knowledge (going back to
thinking level, at least mid level thinker), so we need to approach
hands with a little trepidation and alarm.
Awareness
The best players at the table
will be fully aware of what players are around them in every
session. It’s likely they know who they are going to target and
who to avoid within just a few orbits of play.
If you can single out which
players are the weaker and the stronger players, then you can
adjust your table dynamics much earlier and look to exploit their
weaknesses accordingly.
In conjunction with that, if
you can spot which players have done the same (so which opponent
has spotted the fish and regulars) then you know that these players
are going to be of a relatively high standard and very aware of
their surroundings.
Position
Position can be a big give away
as to how to rate an opponent at the poker table. If you see people
playing tight from early position but much looser when in position
then you know that this player will be rated highly. Conversely, if
they just play the same amount of hands from each seat without
giving any regard to position, then you know that they can be rated
as a weaker player.
VPIP
One of the easiest tells as to
rating our opponents is often their VPIP (voluntarily put in pot)
percentage. This basically means how many hands they are
playing.
If they play a high amount,
anything over 35% is classed as high, then it’s likely they are
going to be a relatively poor player. If they are playing anything
from 18-28% then it’s likely, at first glance at least, that this
player will be relatively competent.
There are exceptions to this
rule, so use this guide and make your own assumptions for each
player.
Key
Points
- When online use every
available resource to rate your player
- Don’t just rely on computer
statistics, look for yourself
- Determine their level of
thing, the quicker you can do this the more it will relate to each
individual aspect of rating players
- Take advantage of actual tells
they may have and stereotypical tendencies
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