I’m going to take a position here that is contrary to everything I’ve ever read or heard from the “experts,” and while I will be the first to admit that I might be wayyyy off base, I have come to truly believe that the importance of being able to read one’s opponents cards is extremely overrated.

This epiphany came to me during a recent hand at the Parx Casino, and to preface the story I am reminded of Richie the Hat, a young aggressive player from my Palm days who was the best reader of an opponent’s cards this side of Daniel Negreanu. Time after time Richie would make amazing reads. To a board of 9-7-6-4-2 he would say “you have 8-10” and he would be correct. And yet he would still call the all-in with 3-5. To a board of 4 diamonds he would say “you definitely have the 9 of diamonds” and then call with the 8 of diamonds. Sometimes with a board of Q-9-7-5-2 he would say “you have the Q-3 of clubs,” and still call with A-9. He was ALWAYS right and yet always lost.

The fact is that while I had often envied Richie’s amazing abilities and while I was rarely able to deduce my opponent’s holdings in any similar fashion, I was a consistent winner and he went broke and far beyond, which should have been a clue even way back then. (Okay your argument will be that if Richie trusted his reads he would have been a winner, thus bolstering the importance of being able to read opponent’s cards. Thank you for pointing this out but I’m not really interested in facts because they get in the way of conjecture).

In any event, the hand that brought me to the final realization was as follows: In a 2-5 no-limit game I played K-Q offsuit in a 5 way limp pot to a flop of K-J-10 with two diamonds. The small blind bet out 100 and I smooth-called. Everyone else mucked around to Hui who was on the button and moved all-in for 400. Hui is a very aggressive player with a wide range of possible holdings. The small blind who had about 700 left took a great deal of time and then smooth-called the raise. The fact that he didn’t shove all of his chips into the pot led me to believe that he was on a draw. If he had a made hand like a straight, set or two pair the proper move would have been for him to go all-in over the top in order to make it more costly if I were on a draw. His failure to do so clearly indicated to me that he was playing two diamonds. Since I was likely behind Hui I thought it would be a good idea to mitigate my potential loss by going all-in over the top since I had the small blind covered and he appeared to be pot-committed for 300 more. And this way if he missed his draw I would get a rebate of 300 if I lost to Hui. So I shoved and to my complete surprise the small blind showed K-10 and mucked.

The turn and river were blanks and Hui just shook his head and said “I have a jack,” losing the pot to my kings. Had I made the correct read I would have mucked my hand and the small blind would have won the pot with two pair.

I have come to believe that this is not an isolated incident but that it is a regular part of a game which is often played with weak players whose failure to make the proper moves lead the better players to false conclusions. And by the same token excellent players can often disguise their hands making it as difficult to deduce their holdings as with the weak players.

What is the lesson to be learned from this? Frankly I’m not really sure but now I’m going to start thinking about whether reading your own cards is overrated as well. After playing online I’m becoming convinced that this may very well be true. In fact there’s a story about Annette Obrerstad who won a 180 player online tournament while only peeking at her cards once during the entire session. I guess she’s a step or two ahead of me on this issue (but then again she was 15 years old when it happened). Anyway I can see the ultimate consequences of such revolutionary ideas. Can you?