How to analyze hands

Many users of PokerStrategy use the sample hand forum for evaluation of their hands. That's good! But you should also evaluate hands on your own to get better. In order to get a good analysis, we need more than just statistics.

by kriegskeks

As mentioned in the introduction, it's not only the statistics that count. Lets take a look at a common sample hand:

NL100 6max
SB ($218.40)
BB ($123.10)
MP2 ($105.35) (Hero)
MP3 ($110.80)
CO ($100.00)
Button ($98.40)

Preflop: Hero is MP2 with A, A
Hero raises to $4.00, 1 folds, CO calls $4.00, 3 folds

Flop: 4, 8, Q ( $9.5 )
Hero bets $7.00, CO calls $7.00,

Turn: 2 ( $23.5 )
Hero bets $17.00, CO calls $17.00,

River: T ( $57.5 )
Hero checks, CO bets $40.00, Hero calls $40.00,

Final Pot: $134.50

This is standard. If I had to evaluate the hand in this way, I would
assume that villain is unknown and therefore a rather weak player. If
we have absolutely no reads, we choose our well-established standard
play (bet flop and turn in order to push the river).
Now we often read posts like: „Villain is 18/15/1.5/28 with 900 hands“.
What's my answer? I ask for reads and give a standard line against
TAGs. Statistics are nice, however they say nothing about the postflop
play. Also aggression values for every street are sketchy, helpful
though, but not good enough to evaluate a hand correctly.

So what should you do?
There are some decisive factors which affects the course of a hand significantly.

1. Your image
Have you played a very aggressive style lately, some of your bluffs had
been caught or you had a few nice suck-outs as a underdog. Such things
have an enormous effect on your opponent's play. Imagine that you sit
on the button and a similar good player sits in the big blind. You get
good cards five times in a row but the BB has to fold his bad cards
every time. He doesn't know that you have a good run, thus he will
defend his blinds more aggressively in the future because he won't give
you credit any more.

2. Your opponent's image
If your opponent plays 22/17 or 40/10 does make a difference, but you
have to go more into detail. What's his range of hands? Does he raise
much more in late position or is it rather balanced? How often did he
play limp/fold? Does he raise big pocket pairs preflop or does he just
limp with them? Many players are afraid when someone with 20/5 stats
suddenly raises but do not consider that these sort of player tends to
often slowplay their aces and other premium hands. Keep an eye on such
behaviour, take notes and consider them when you look at the hand.

3. The image of the others
If CO raises and you call QQ on the button, it might be a good play
under certain circumstances. Because not only it's necessary to have
information about your direct opponent, but also to have information
about players who still have to act behind you. That's why you should
always observe the whole table in order to let this information affect
your hand evaluation.

4. Postflop Lines
A very aggressive opponent has a high AF value, but this fact reveals
nothing about his hand yet. It's important to realise if his raise size
varies. A minraise might be a bluff for some, and for others a monster.
Is he capable of raising his draws or does he just likes to raise
wildly around, no matter if underpair or top-pair? A number can never
say as much as a sharp observation. Therefore we should play very
attentively. There are many guys that adjust their bet size according
to the quality of their cards which gives you some reads. This also has
to be taken into consideration.

Conclusion

So, what lesson can we learn from this article? We should make profound thoughts about our hand and also include them into our post in the forum. The sample hand forum is a very important feature which will improve your play enormously when you are an active user. But in order to analyse a hand thoroughly, you have to consider a lot of things. In the low limits it's still very profitable to play standard lines, but eventually, you want to improve your play in order to advance the levels. So then, you should watch the situation more closely and describe in detail all the information, which is available at that time. As a result, you get the best strategy which has immediate effect on your own play. That's because you chew over all this information in the forum and will start to think about it in your own play as well in order to make the best decision.

We have another interesting post from xylere in the forum. Feel free to discuss it as well as this article here:
» Thread: Sample hands discussion