This might happen if your opponent has missed his low and doesn’t call you with one pair.
At the end of a hand, it becomes especially crucial to have a good idea of what your opponent has.
The more accurately you can read hands, the better you can determine what your chances are of having your opponent beat.
This, of course, helps you in deciding how to play your hand.
In practice, most players at least try to determine whether an opponent has a bad hand, mediocre hand, a good hand, or a great hand. For instance, let’s say your opponent bets on the end.
Usually when a person bets, it represents wither a bluff, a good hand, or a great hand, but not a mediocre hand.
If your opponent had a mediocre hand, you must determine what the chances warrant a call in relation to the pot odds.
For example, most online poker players will not bet a rough low on the end if someone else also appears to be going low.
This is the mediocre type hand that they hope will win the pot in a showdown.
We have seen that in seven card stud eight-or-better, one way to read hands is to start by considering a variety of possible hands an opponent might have and then to eliminate some of those possibilities as the hand develops.
A complementary way to read hands is to work backward.
For instance, if someone with a small card up cold calls a raise and a reraise by a king and a small card, then catches medium-sized cards higher than an eight on fourth street and fifth street, but is able to raise on sixth street, you think back on his play in earlier round.
Since it does not seem possible that he would have gone this far with something like a small three straight, you now have to suspect that he is rolled up.
Here is another example. Suppose on sixth street that a player who called a raise on third street has Someone with a king in the door and a small pair on board bets; another player who caught an ace on sixth street and who has two other small cards up, both lower than a six, raises; and now this person calls the raise.
What is his hand?
First, notice it is unlikely that this player just has a draw to a six.
Given the cards showing in his opponents’ hands, he may have only a small chance of winning even half the pot, since he is likely to be against a player who has him locked out of the high and another player who may have him locked out of both the high and the low.
