Staying Unreadable

At the lower stakes no limit games, tight straightforward play is the best way to profit but as you move up in stakes it becomes increasingly important to mix up your play. At the medium and high stakes levels, you’ll see the same opponents quite often and you can bet they’re taking notes on you.

We humans tend to fall into patterns no matter how hard we try to avoid it. That’s why it’s best to keep your game as simple as possible. The less you have to keep track of, the easier it is to keep your opponents off guard. Here are several little tricks you can use to keep your play hard to read.

Simple Ways to Stay Unreadable

1. Use a system to size all your preflop raises.

If you keep your preflop raises the same size no matter what you have, you will give out zero information about the strength of your starting cards.  What I recommend you do is make every preflop raise 4 x BB + 1.  This means your default raise is 4 big blinds in size plus 1 big blind for every limper already in the pot.

2. Use a system to size all your continuation bets

Make every flop bet equal to 75% the size of the pot no matter what you have.  By using this rule, the size of your flop bet will never give away the strength of your hand.  Even if your opponents know you always bet 75%, they won’t know what you have.  The size of your bet will change with the size of the pot so it’s not always obvious that you’re using a system. But even if your opponents know you’re using a system, what can they do about it? Nothing.

3. Mix Up Your Continuation Bets

Your opponents will mess with your continuation bets more and more as you move up in stakes. What I mean by “messing with your continuation bets” is that they will pull more floats, attempt more bluff-raises and anything else they can think of to keep you off guard.

By mixing up the way you play your hands on the flop, you can keep them guessing about what you have. Don’t throw out a continuation bet every single time you raise preflop. Mix in the occasional check/raise and check/fold with both strong hands and weak hands. When you keep your play varied, your opponents won’t know how to react because you could have just about anything.

It’s possible to get too tricky so don’t overdo your play on the flop. Keep it simple for the most part. All it takes is the occasional strange play to keep your opponents wondering about you. This is most important against opponents you see at the tables often.

But Remember:

There are no absolutes in poker. Even the above section where I said you can use systems to keep your opponents guessing has its own exceptions. Sometimes you’ll want to make different plays before the flop or in the size of your raises – that’s perfectly normal. But for the most part, these 3 simple tips will keep you unreadable and keep your opponents guessing.

Now go try out your new knowledge against the fish at PokerStars or check out these related articles:

Bluffing
Taking Notes On Your Opponents