In David Sklansky’s book, The Theory of Poker, he presents what he calls The Fundamental Theorem of Poker. Sounds like fun, huh? It’s actually pretty simple and the theorem clearly states what is optimal poker strategy. It is based on the fact that if all of the players in a game could see each others cards, there would always be a correct and incorrect play based on mathematics. A player that understood the math would be able to play perfectly.

Every time you play a hand differently from the way you would have played it if you could see all your opponents’ cards, they gain; and every time you play your hand the same way you would have played it if you could see all their cards, they lose. Conversely, every time opponents play their hands differently from the way they would have if they could see all your cards, you gain; and every time they play their hands the same way they would have played if they could see all your cards, you lose.

—David Sklansky, The Theory of Poker

This is where the ability to “read hands” comes in. Hand reading is never an exact science, it is more a logical guess based on observed actions and behavior patterns. Let’s try an oversimplified example. If you know, based on thousands of hands of history, that your opponent only 3bets with AA or KK, then you know that he holds one of these two hands every time he 3bets.

So does this make it incorrect to call his 3bet with your 98s? Not necessarily. Since you have narrowed down his range to one of two hands, you have a huge advantage once the flop comes out. If you flop say, two pair, it is going to be very hard for your opponent to let go of his hand and you will probably be able to get all the money in. In this extreme example, knowing what your opponent holds can be enough to overcome the strength differences between your hands, provided that the implied odds are great enough to justify the call.

This of course is not a very realistic example. In a real game most opponents are not this predictable. That’s why we must learn to define a hand range in order to be able to correctly play our hand. A tight-aggressive villain 3bets 5% of the time preflop. This indicates that he is not likely 3betting many, if any, junk hands or speculative hands. What he is 3betting are hands like 99+, AQo+, and AJs+. Now that we know the range that this 5% 3better likely holds, we can play much closer to optimal as defined by Sklansky’s Fundamental Theorem of Poker.

We will discuss hand reading much more in the future, including how to calculate your equity versus a villains hand range.