Play Better Poker

In poker, players can think on a few different levels.  Generally the more advanced a player is the higher a level he is thinking on.  You should be thinking on at least three levels whenever you play.  The levels are: 

1. What do you have? This is the simplest level; you merely look at your hand and the board and figure out how strong your hand is.
2. What does your opponent have?  This is a bit more complicated as you have to try to pin them down to as narrow a range of holdings as you can.
3. What does your opponent think that you have?  This is even more complicated as you have to evaluate your own play from the standpoint of a player who hasn’t seen your hole cards which can  be hard to do since you have seen your hold cards.  Your table image and the way you have played so far in the current hand factor in highly here.
4. What does your opponent think that you think that he has?  Here you are trying to figure out his level  3 thought process.  Of course if you opponent doesn’t think that deep it will be less important  but still not unimportant because though he may not pay that much mind consciously he is definitely doing so subconsciously.  His subconscious thought may manifest itself in his play so it can still be helpful to be aware of it even though you would give it less weight than you would against a player who can think on that level consciously. 

                As you can imagine the levels could theoretically go on forever but anything much beyond level four is too complicated to worry about.  Trust me when I say that you can go pretty far up the poker chain and not run into many people who even think clearly on that level, let alone above it.

                Nonetheless it is hard to win at any significant stakes without incorporating the first three levels into your thought process since so many players will be thinking either consciously or subconsciously on level three.  Like everything else in life your ability to think on these higher levels will row as you gain experience.  You should be able to think on at least level 2 fright from the beginning and level 3 after a little experience.  Beyond that things start to get a bit murky and it may take you some time to get to level 4.  Don’t worry though, there is plenty of money to be made before you can truly think like that.