Calculating hand ranges in live games

[sweetlemon69]

So my buddies and I are going to move our game to the local casino's soon and since I've become so accustom to the HUD's statistics, I'd really like to see how people here put %'s to peoples hand ranges in live games. This may sound stupid, but are people literally keeping track of the amount of hands played, how many times roughly they've played? (Hey, I'm sure it's possible to some of the Rainman's crawling this forum ). Or are people looking at stuff they've shown; say you see a guy UTG playing A10, 33+, etc and saying well he's roughly 25vpip etc (Able to put a rough % to something like this from vigorous poker stove use) ? Hope this doesn't sound stupid...


Please don't flame to hard lol

[Fnord]

You need to think differently. Focus more on detailed reads instead of pre-flop numbers. That data is MORE valuable anyway and when only playing a single table, you should have no problem collecting it.

"Likes to see flops with just about any 2 cards, folds when he misses"
"Plays loose, likes to float around but folds when you really put him to the test"
"Hates money, plays just about anything and will stack off with any piece"
"Tries to play well, but is too passive/predicatable and will play lukewarm hands out of position and complete his SB with any 2"

I'll take that over HUD stats any day!

[cowboyardee]

You remember hands like a chess player remembers moves. Do not worry about precise numbers, percentages (you can still figure out pot odds, but otherwise don't sweat it). Do not try to figure out what % opp X plays preflop as the math will distract you from what you should be noting -- that opp limp called A4s a few hands ago from mp, check-called a pot-sized flop bet with a fd, and open shoved 200+ into a $55 pot when he hit his flush on the turn... and when he shoved, he shoved very fast. Opp Y (button, initial raiser) tried to talk a bit of info out of X, got no response, and then looked him up with TPMK.

Live games are slooow in comparison, so you pick up all kinds of information on your opps. Also, at least at lower limits in a casino, the players are often a lot worse than you'll see online, so tweaking a mathematical edge comes in a distant second to spotting huge holes in someone's game and plowing through them.

[Fnord]

^^^^ What He Said ^^^^

I'll just add a term: Information Leakage.

Live players leak tons of information and are very predictably bad.

[eugmac]

LOL yeah. Live fish are like, 100X bigger than online fish. I remember one time I went to the casino with a friend (ended up stacking him with my AK vs his AT on a AKT flop, lol) and one hand, the friend had QTs or something, and the flop was ATT. Super-donk bets, friend smooth calls and so does the decent player. Turn comes, donk bets again, friend raises, and the decent player folds, and accidentally flashes his lower T (impressive fold!). Donkey sees the T, and agonizes over his decision forever, and decides that my friend couldn't have the case T, so he calls. Rivers comes A, the donk literally JUMPS out of his seat, and pushes the rest of his chips in.

Friend folds his lower full house face up, absolutely disgusted.

[kingnat]

Ask the other players if it's ok for you to put post-it-notes on their shirts to help your mad reading skillzroz....

[sweetlemon69]

This is great info guy. Hear how casino's are filled with more fish than online is ... a little tooo appetizing lol. I'm sure my buddies and I will be heading there even faster now!!