Hidden Hands in Poker

In poker and online poker you build your strategy on deceit. As David Sklansky has defined it, whenever a player plays a hand differently than he would if he could see his opponent’s hole cards, he’s making a mistake and he’s giving up value. This is valid for you as well as for your opponent. If you make it easy on him to read your hand, or to accurately put you on a range of hands, you’re making it easier for him to generate value on your back. This is why deceit is so important in poker. Sure, you won’t be able to hide the values of all your hands from your opponents, but the more such hands you manage to keep hidden, the more mistakes your opponents shall commit, which means that you’ll make that much more money.

Hidden hands are of two types in poker. Naturally hidden hands require no additional effort on your part to confuse your opponents. These hands are unreadable ones and they usually involve both cards from your pocket. Remember that whenever you use both pocket cards in a hand, the odds of your opponent placing you on the correct range of hands are halved. If you only use one pocket card, you’ll be much easier to read. Let’s see an example in this sense: you have A,K in your pocket and the board comes 4,K,K. In this situation, if you begin betting and raising to get money into the pot, chances are your opponent will catch on to the third K that you have concealed. If you had K,K in the pocket though, and the board came A,J,K, it would be next to impossible for your opponent to figure out what you’re holding.

This is exactly the reason why small pocket pairs represent great implied odds hands in cash game poker. You probably know the theory behind set-mining: you take your low pocket pairs to the flop every time you can, and even though you lose some money on the times the flop doesn’t hit you for a set, you’ll make more money than that because when the flop hits you, your hand is bound to take down a huge pot. Such implied odds sets will take down nice pots specifically because they are so darn difficult to read.

Another example of a naturally disguised hand would be the straight that you make when you see the flop on suited one-gappers. Professional poker players like suited one gappers because it is a very versatile hand: it allows them to sell a reckless image at the table, and on top of that – much like sets made on pocket pairs – it is an excellent implied odds hand. The odds on a suited one gapper are much better than most players would think, and in addition to that, whenever such a hand fills up, it takes down a huge pot. A straight made with suited one gappers is a truly impossible to read hand indeed.

If your hand fails to secure the blessing of being a naturally hidden one, it is up to you to take the necessary measures.

In order to efficiently attempt the concealment of your hand, you need to make some pretty accurate reads on your opponents, and you need to have the right table image promoted. Being tricky, check-raising draws and making other such fancy plays may be effective against an opponent who hasn’t managed to read you. Against someone who read you though, sometimes the most straightforward thing is the right thing. In order to know who has you read and who hasn’t, you need to have your reads on your opponents too though.

Never abuse deceptive plays. For the best effect, mix deceit with straightforward moves. That way you’ll be able to preserve your image and exploit it accordingly.

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