One Vital Poker

To be a winner in online poker and especially in live games, involves much more than making your opponents confused about your strategy. Certainly, becoming unpredictable is a positive thing, at first glance, but in the long-run it might not be a lucrative option at all.

In live poker, people play each other and not their cards. That’s a fact everyone knows, and it is true for online poker too, to a certain extent. Sure, you won’t see players acting out intricate mind-games at the low-to-micro-limit tables, where multi-tabling is at home and where fish roam free. At higher stakes however, the game will resemble a highly disputed offline one (one can actually download poker videos from special poker torrent sites to see it first-hand, since taking part in an actual games like this can run up quite a high bill).

The bottom line is, opponent manipulation will hang in the balance much heavier in games where it truly matters. An opponent that one is able to manipulate is one that is bound to yield a much better return than a confused one any day. To that end, one needs to become a master of table image, its creation and the right way to show it off to opponents.

There are several ways to create the wrong table image and to let opponents catch on to it without them becoming suspicious. One easy way recommended by the experts is to act extra loose pre-flop, and then extra tight on the flop. This approach will provide several benefits: on one hand, it’ll let the table know that they’re dealing with a true maniac, on the other hand, it’ll allow you to see many more flops than you usually would, which will increase your chances of catching a reasonable hand.

Once you do happen upon something you just go on betting and raising like you usually do, chances are someone on a reasonable and possibly weaker hand will attempt to keep you honest.

The downside of the matter is, looking like a maniac can become extremely costly too, especially if Lady Luck decides to turn her back on you.

Truly outstanding poker player take a different approach to the problem. They reckon that as long as you’re playing, you’re broadcasting a certain table image no matter what you do. Making sure you show the wrong one cost a lot of effort and resources, and it is prone to failure. Why bother with it? You can just play your regular game and not do anything artificial. Sure people will sooner or later catch on, and they’ll have you read. There you have it, you’ve induced a table image without any supplementary effort or investment whatsoever. What’s that? I know it’s the right table image, and not the wrong one, but for a really skilled poker player the boundaries between right and wrong can be extremely hazy. A good player senses that he’s bee read and he switches gears. Suddenly, he ceases to be the maniac everyone thought they knew, and becomes an extra tight scrapper or vice-versa. He’ll also take advantage of what other people think they know about him, as long as he’ll get read again. Than he switches again, and all this can pretty much go on forever.

With the sudden changes in direction, he’ll have his opponents unbalanced time and time again, and until the balance is re-established, he’ll take full advantage of the situation. This approach can be extremely lucrative in middle to high stakes online poker, where other factors such as proper table selection and poker rakeback will provide a further edge too.

Don’t try to get into such shenanigans on low limits though. Chances are you’ll end up manipulating the life out of your opponents who won’t even bother to pay any sort of attention to you.