[chris]

just a general questions, i know who you're playing with and all that is important....but for now, what i wanna know is, how do you read someone in bb? i mean, if people are limping in, or coming in w/small to medium raises, the bb would have the options. is there anyway to read pre-flop, post flop etc? or this is something you have to know who you're playing against?

hope that made sense

[norshvind]

I'll take a stab at this one...but a little unclear on the question...we'll see if I read YOU right [Wink]

If we were to assume anything about any given hand by itself on a full table, it is probably about 85% safe to assume that it is not a powerful hand. Whether it is the BB or not has nothing to do with my point...but lets just assume that the average tight player (plays legitimate starting hands) may see 1 out of 8-10 flops, because those are the overall ratio's of times that he sees a good hand vs. a bad hand. So it is probably safe to assume that all things aside, the BB will have a real hand about this % of the time.

As for a read...well a real easy read is when the BB exercises his option to raise. Unless he is cookoo, this is usually a sure sign of AA or KK....maybe AK if he is aggressive. Whether or not I will raise these hands in the BB is a different story and may depend on a variety of factors, but most of your average players will raise these hands. Whether or not their req's are stricter or looser than my own, you can generally assume that a preflop raise or re-raise from the BB would be a fairly decent hand.

As for post flop play from the BB, can't really give you any specific advice since they could be holding anything and you will have to use your normal post flop analysis to determine the strength of his hand based on his betting patters and/or any obvious tells you may pick up on.

One thing I do notice though, is that in the event of a low unconnected flop....or something like 2-2-5, you will often see the BB take a stab at the pot....he may or may not have it, but because he was forced to play the hand, he may very well have a two, or may be able to take advantage of the fact that he is more likely to have a 2 that the other players, and that they have no way to tell. This is a very typical bluff play...but you never know when he just might have it.

Thats all I got for now. Hope this helps!

[ThomasR]

Theres no real easy way. I mean at a table of reasonable players, medium raises will generally mean high pocket pairs, high cards or suicide. Low raises pocket pairs, high cards perhaps, maybe just trying to narrow the field down. Firm callers and limpers want to see more cards cheaply, but are unlikely to have particularly strong hands... yet.

Position is largely irrelevant, this goes for everyone, though the BB has the advantage of seeing how many he is likely to have to face on the flop.