If you want to win at online poker, you’re going to have to learn to read some hands. Getting to know your opponents at the casino is the best way to do that. Get to know their mannerisms, their speech patterns, and specifically, ways that they try to get your money.

I know a player who always uses the same trick to get people to bet against him. As the night wears on, he’ll sigh, look at his watch, and start complaining about how tired he is, how he’s got an early morning the next day, or some other reason that he wants to go home soon. After a few hands of complaining, he’ll look at his chips, and say, “I just want to go home”, and push all his chips in. Figuring that he just wants to get out of the game, he almost always gets at least one call, and (surprise!) he’s got the nuts every time. It amazes me that this ploy still works most of the time.

Most poker tells aren’t this obvious, but if you keep your eyes open, you’ll be able to pick up much more subtle ones: people shrugging like they don’t care, acting like raising is a bad idea, and so on.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 2:45 pm and is filed under Lady Luck, The Funny Farm, World Of Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.