Holdem Tools to See Through Opponents' Cards

In online or land based Holdem it's vital to see our winning chances. Aside from seeking the help of poker calculators we should know how to "peek through" the opponents' cards. Here are Texas Holdem tools to get a good idea of what opponents have.

The first tool is raise bets. This Texas Holdem tool means to bet an amount that would challenge the previous one. If, say, we have a caller chasing us and we have a strong hand we raise our bet. If the player is a mere caller and doesn't have good cards to back up a re-raise the player would stop chasing us. But if the player re-raises this player might have a strong hand to reckon with.

Another is to try two successive big bets. This Texas Holdem tool aims to see who would dare call two very big bets in succession. If somebody does it is most likely the player has a very strong hand to back up the call. Do this especially when the game reaches post flop and the turn. The caller benefited from the flop or has been dealt monster hands at pre-flop.

A different form of Texas Holdem tool is watching who makes check-calls. When somebody checks-call us it means we have gained position over the player - that's why the player checks and later calls our wager; it is in hopes that we'd stop raising or betting. But when we do the player calls our bet to be able to peek at the next card. Check-callers often have weak hands.

One last Texas Holdem tool that summarizes the above tools is to bet aggressively when we hit our potential draw. If we have a straight or flush potential and we hit the draw cards we should make big bets online. Some would probably think that aggressive bets would shoo off all the players in the hand, leaving us with none - and perhaps only the blinds to win.

At least we won the blinds. That's better than suffering a bad beat when, because of slow playing a strong hand, an opponent buys time and gets lucky to chance upon a good flop card that beats our hand all of a sudden - leaving us with nothing. We just wasted a good Texas Holdem tool for winning.

We should know powerful Texas Holdem tools and learn to use them properly. They enable us to "see through" the cards of our opponents without actually looking directly at them and cheat.