Comment What goes through the mind of a poker player (Score 2, Informative) 104
Poker is a game of incomplete information. You use the information that you do have to draw conclusions and then you make bets based on those conclusions.
Good poker players tend to think about poker hands in terms of hand ranges. A hand range is every poker hand that an opponent will take a certain action with. Ideally you'd like to narrow your opponents range down to a single hand because you can then play perfectly against him (it would be very easy to play perfectly against someone who showed you their cards). Unfortunately thats not possible very often as there are 169 non-equivalent poker hands and our opponent is going to play many of them similarly.
Each different piece of information that we get from our opponent however allows us to narrow his range and make a better decision.
For example if I'm playing in a 9 handed game and someone raises from UTG(stand for under the gun or the first player to act) he is acting with the least amount of information. Therefore he has to player a tighter(better) range of hands. He is more likely to have a premium holding because he made a bet with very little information.
If someone were to raise from the button (the last player to act on every street) his range of hands is considerably wider because he has more information with which to make his decisions and can therefore play more hands profitably.
Thats a very basic description of hand analysis, but some other information we take into account is our opponents past tendancies, their position, what they perceive our range to be based on the actions that we've taken, and obviously what cards we have and what cards end up coming out of the deck on the flop turn and river.
