Those who have seen Phil Helmuth play will know that he loves to put someone on an exact hand, although experience shows that he usually puts you on a pair of eights. Is it possible though? Sure it is. Are we going to show you how? Sure we are (well we'll try to anyway).

Elimination and hesitation are the two most important aspects of working out the two cards in your opponent’s hand. You may see players showing each other their hole cards. You may do it yourself. As we have said in previous pro-tips: don't do it. It is much harder to read a player if you never see their cards. You may think it innocent, but that show may come back to haunt you. The more you play with particular players, the more you build up a picture of what they are likely to do in a certain situation. Would they reraise with aces pre-flop? Sometimes? Always? Never? Would they raise UTG with AQ off-suit? Would they play a small pair in early position whether limping, raising or calling a raise?

What you have to do is imagine a sliding scale of hands starting at the top (AA) and moving down to 22 or rag, rag even. When you have a decision to make – usually when someone has raised or re-raised or even re-re-raised – start that slide working certain hands that are very close together and some very far apart (even though they are close together). Confused? OK, AJ and 88 close together. QQ and JJ far apart; 10,10 and AQ close together, AK and AQ far apart. It is important to know which players understand these very subtle but important differences. The scale should be adjusted for other factors such as position, players in the pot and stack size.

The key is to ask yourself what the player in question would do with a certain hand. If you know that a player won't re-raise you with worse than your AQ, then you must muck. You often know, having re-raised someone, immediately how strong they are by the “dwell” (or hesitation), or lack of it.

Having said all this, it is getting to know the player in particular and what they are capable of. Players like Ali Maloo and Ram Vaswani are very different in comparison to the Darryl Wongs and Robin Kestons in this poker world.

Note: Ali Maloo is capable of re-re-raising on a final table with not much at all if he thinks the player will lay down, and Darryl has trouble calling with aces pre-flop.

These Pro Tips are provided by TheHendonMob themselves and were originally published on www.thehendonmob.com. The website features poker articles, tips, competitions, a great forum and the first and most comprehensive worldwide poker tournament database http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/