Opponent Playing Hands

The reason this distinction is helpful for you to understand is that it will make reading opponents' hands easier. Most conceptual errors obviously result in your opponent playing hands incorrectly given the situation. He may make any possible playing error based on his misunderstanding of poker theory.

Knowing the errors he will make will allow you to broaden the range of hands you consider him to hold. For instance, if an opponent will put in as many bets as he can with a four flush or three-of-a-kind, you can use the mathematical distribution of cards including a four flush as a `likely' hand to help determine what he holds.

Depending on the game, there may be more four flushes possible than three-of-a-kinds and it may, therefore, be a more likely hand he's holding.

I will get into a further discussion of game specific conceptual errors later in the book because this issue causes a lot of bad play.

There is not much to say about experts but "It often takes one to know one". If you closely watch experts play, some things they do might appear odd. If you miss even one small glimmer of information that they have picked up, their expert play might seem poor.

the range of hands

study strategy and tactics

the location of the button

the particular situation