Here’s a hand I played where my foe’s uncharacteristic pattern of play made it easy for me to chart the proper course.

With A-J suited, I had made a standard late position raise. The small blind folded, leaving only the big blind, who had shown the pattern of either folding weak hands or re-raising enough to drive me off my positional raise. This time, however, he made a minimum re-raise. A wildly off-pattern action, it suggested either that he’d suddenly turned timid and hoped he could drive me off the hand for cheap, or else that he had a huge hand, and was trying to tease me into the pot.

Having previously seen caution, but not outright timidity from this foe, it was easy for me to eliminate the first possibility. I put him on a big pair, something from Tens up. Of course, his minraise gave me odds to call, so I did. But when the flop came down 10-3-2 and he checked, I didn’t even consider making a continuation bet.

Based on his pattern aberration, I could readily conclude that he had a hand better than the board, and certainly better than mine, so I checked. The turn was a brick. He checked again, no doubt hoping I would bet. But I trusted my read and checked again. When another rag fell on the river, he finally made a modest bet – half the pot.

This convinced me I was right: he had tried to get me to do his betting for him, and when that didn’t work, he took a shot at extracting some value from his overpair. It didn’t work. I folded, and with a sigh, he showed me his pocket Aces. I didn’t have tells working for me, and I didn’t have ESP. All I had was awareness of patterns and sensitivity to deviation from the norm.