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I got demolished one other time by thinking on a different level.

I got demolished one other time by thinking on a different level. Instead of thinking above my opponent, I was thinking one level below him. This hand came up three-handed at the WPT Mirage event. The effective stack size was around 50BBs. I raised J-8 from the button to 2.5BBs and Cory Carrol, who is an excellent, aggressive player, re-raised to around 9BBs from the small blind. I had been raising a fairly wide range from the button and I knew Cory knew that, so I decided that he was capable of re-raising me with a wide range as well. If I went all-in and he called, I would have decent equity with J-8, and if I lost the hand, I would still have a manageable 20BB stack. Knowing all that, I decided to go all-in, expecting him to fold all but his best hands. He thought for a while and called with A-5, which shocked me, but makes sense if he knows that I think he is going to re-raise a huge amount of the time. The flop came A-5-5 and I was down to a short stack. I got humbled nicely.

You can see from these examples that you can fall prey

You can see from these examples that you can fall prey to both over- and under-thinking your opponents. Sadly, the only way to learn how to put your opponents on a specific level is through hours of play with every type of player. Amateurs generally think about their cards and sometimes what you might have. Good players think about their cards, what you have, what their hand appears to be to you, what you think your hand appears to be to them, and so on. Against these types of players, I tend to stay out of the leveling war and play my standard, aggressive poker game, as that style of play will always be neutral or +EV. While I may cost myself a little equity by avoiding some leveling wars that I might win, I save my stack some percentage of the time, which is quite important in a tournament.