Pick one player in your next session and make him or her your target. Learn everything you can about this player. What if you never play him or her again? It won’t matter, the skills you learn from this exercise will translate to everyone else.
Poker is a game that is played on many levels, and there are many reasons to play. If your goal is to ratchet up your game to new heights, you must approach each game as a chance to better yourself, whether it comes from focusing on pot odds, playing short stacked, or dozens of other skills you can develop, such as learning to read a player. In the “Target a Player” exercise, it is this reading ability that you will be working on.
During the course of a game pick one player to target, and then go about playing your normal game of poker. In addition to playing as you would normally, every time you are going to make a decision, ask yourself what the target will do, or how you think they might react, and then watch to see what he or she actually does.
Over time you will begin to understand their playing style, the way they think, how they behave when they have a good hand or when they are frustrated with a flop or a bet.
Also spend time watching them when you are out of a hand; in fact, that should be your total focus when you have folded. Don’t just watch, however -- make guesses about their behavior and the reasons why they will do what you predict.
This way your building good reading skills and the habit of asking the right questions.
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