Reading Your Opponents

What are the most reliable ways to identify an opponent's playing style?

I usually analyze their bet sizing, aggression, position, and showdowns. After several rounds of play, you can get a sense of whether they are tight, loose, passive, or aggressive. It all comes down to identifying patterns. You cannot judge their game based on a single round. ♠️

Obviously showdowns. If they make it to showdown we can see what they had and we can back engineer their line and mindset. However if we play 100 hands with this player they might only showdown a dozen times. It doesn't give a large sample size. Although sometimes if we are lucky we see obvious things. I remember a player who limp-called large and chased a flush with weak suited hands 3 times in 2 orbits and hit all 3 because I saw him win at showdown. I can reliably note that this fish grossly overvalues any 2 suited cards and can't win these spots without extreme buttluck. When he doesn't get lucky he bleeds money playing that way and I can exploit that.

Other than showdowns, frequency is probably our best indicator. The simplest example is someone who will limp and call to see 70 or 80% of flops. His frequency to call pre flop being so staggeringly high and his frequency to open being nearly non existent makes this guy an epic calling station.

Pay attention to frequencies in certain spots. Frequency of c-betting flops in position. If this is very high, we know that he's overbluffing flops. We can trap him. If his frequency of checking back rivers is high, he's likely chasing draws and giving up fairly often. We can bluff rivers to exploit this.

winner3699 said:

What are the most reliable ways to identify an opponent's playing style?

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The first step is to understand the GTO playing style, with that as a basis for yourself you can then see how your Villains are deviating. It is hard to say someone is LAG if you do not know what playing style is neutral in the first place.

There are lots of free ways to study GTO ranges now.

GTO WIZARD - LUCID POKER- OCTOPI-