If there is one thing that poker players commonly lack (other than tans, girlfriends, or fashion sense…) it would be patience. It is way too easy to become bored while playing poker and that is when you start to make mistakes. An easy way to help counter the boredom is to pay close attention to the game and take mental or physical notes on what is going on; not only will this prevent you from becoming bored and playing more hands than you should, but it will also give you invaluable information that you can use to crush the table that you are on.
While playing online, nearly every site has some form of a note taking feature available in their software, which makes it extremely easy to take good, detailed notes. If you play mostly live and at the same location often it is a good idea to take a small notebook and make notes on the players in between hands. By paying attention to what is going on at the table and taking notes on the players you will be able to have more information available when making future decisions.
Your superior ability to observe and interpret the action that is going on is one of the major factors that will result in your advantage over the other players at the table. This is more readily apparent while playing live poker: the vast majority of live poker players at the lower stakes are not professionals and play mainly for recreation. More casual players aren’t as interested in making money and don’t take the game as seriously. You are often able to get a mountain of information on these players in a short amount of time just by paying attention to the action at the table.
Keeping track of what cards they have at showdown and how they played them pre-flop will give you a huge head start in putting them on ranges when you are playing against them in future hands. If you saw a player limp pocket tens in late position and a few hands later they raise in late position it would be a lot easier to put them on a monster hand and play accordingly. Had you been listening to your iPod and thinking about what you were going to get for dinner you would have no clue what the other player might have and could easily miss out on a profitable situation or play back at a monster hand.
With the expansion of online poker, even more information has become available to you as a player: now you are able to see mucked losing cards immediately after a hand has been completed without having to rudely ask the dealer to show a players hand which can cause major disruptions in a live game. This allows you to more quickly define another player’s range of hands. Unfortunately many online players don’t take advantage of this extra information which would help them make tough decisions later in the game. As long as you aren’t playing a ridiculous number of tables, it should not be a problem at all to go into the hand history of the previous hand to check on people’s cards.
One tool that can help assist you in viewing and analyzing all this new found data is a heads up display, or HUD for short. A HUD takes the statistical information gathered by a data aggregation and tracking program such as PokerTracker and puts it directly onto the poker table, which allows you to view detailed statistical analysis on every player on the table based on the hands that you have played against them. The extra information provided can help you make key decisions which will result in an overall higher profitability. HUDs also usually include a feature that will display mucked losing cards at the conclusion of each hand so that you do not have to take the time to go into the hand history menu.
Unfortunately such tools aren’t available for use in live poker, but there are other kinds of information that you can use to gain an advantage. The biggest change from online poker to live poker is the presence of physical “tells”. A tell is a physical indication of some kind of emotion; for example, many players will sit up straighter and move closer to the table when they have a big hand. Another tell is when someone’s hand is shaking: many people would interpret this as nervousness and assume the player is bluffing, but what actually causes someone’s hands to shake is a release of nervous energy when they hit a monster hand.
There have been several books written that outline all the common poker tells, with the most famous being Mike Caro’s Book of Tells. By learning about what each tell means and paying close attention to the other players at the table you will gain an advantage over them that will increase your win rate. Just be careful! Other players may have read the same book and be giving off ‘false tells’ to get you to take the wrong action. By observing the other players with your newfound powers of perception you can quickly figure out who the weak players are and use your superior skill and knowledge to take advantage of their poor play.
