Assessing Your Opponents Skill Level
Not everyone plays the same and not everyone is capable of playing at the same level you are. Some players will just not be as good of a poker player as you and some will be better players than you. Figuring out what the skill level of your opponents is has a wide range of consequences. The most common element is simply that if a player is much less talented than you, you may discover that your super sophisticated moves will have no chance of working because your opponent will not recognize what you are doing. You can’t push a beginning rock off of a pot, even when you make the pot odds horrendous for them, because they don’t calculate pot odds. A post Oak bluff will not work if the other player doesn’t see it for what it is.
On the other end of the spectrum, your fancy moves may be completely transparent to a much better player and you will not see their adjustments to your game. Remember the old saying: “If you don’t recognize the fish at the table, it could be you.”
You wouldn’t read Daniel Negreanu the same way you read the new kid, who can’t figure out when it’s his turn to act. So figuring out how good your opponents are, should be your goal as soon as you sit down at a poker table. This is precisely why many players have a poker room they always play in, this means they will “know” some of the players every time they take a seat at the table and not be facing nine opponents of unknown skill levels.
-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #181
