Levelling - - Hand Reading

"Multiple level thinking is largely what seperates professionals from amateurs, what seperate players who win at the top levels from those who lose" - Sklansky

For the most part players on my level, including myself, think on level one the majority of the time. This level, refered to as the "Zeroth" level in "Theory and Practise", is where a player only considers his hand and what possible hands can beat his hand.

The next level or '1st level' is where we consider what our opponent has based on the actions that he makes. For instance, he raised pre-flop therefore he must have a strong hand or he made a big bet he must have hit his hand, or his bet is typical of a weak hand... etc. etc.

The following level or '2nd level' we think about what our opponents might think we have based on the actions we've taken. So if we raised pre-flop our opponents are likely to think we have AK rather than J5.

Using just these three levels and maybe the third level, which is to think about what our opponent thinks we think he has, we should have a significant edge on most opponents at the micro stakes.

The trick is to put your opponent at a level and think one level deeper, which will usually be the 2nd level.

Update

Didn't make my goal of breaking even on sharkscope for my 2000th sng. I came close but went on a bad streak. Just couldnt get deep like i was doing recently and took a lot of bad beats. Also played some when i was just not in the frame of mind to make good decisions... always a bad thing.

I've made two more final tables in the 180s recently but busted 5th both times. I will have to adjust my FT strategy and see if i can improve these results.

I have been meaning to update the layout of this blog for some time now and will try to do it this week. I will change up some content to reflect my current focus on small stakes multi-table sngs. I will also put up a replay video one of a $3/45 sng win and a $4/180 sng FT.