Poker
is a game of the mind. That
simple statement sums up
the majority of poker and
many other games. Poker
demands the attention of
its players minds to both
defend and fight against
their opponents but at the
same time themselves. The
average player understands
that when you receive those
pocket aces you don't get
up out of your chair and
taunt the other players.
Things like that just don't
happen; the reason why is
that playing poker is about
getting your opponent to
hand over his chips. A certain
amount of distraction and
tactic is required to accomplish
this and for many, take
years to fine tune and refine.
I say within their own mind because that is really the first place a good poker player must look to fix problems. What problems? What the poker community knows as 'tells' is the greatest problem that any poker player must deal with and continue to keep in check their whole career. 'Tells' are: any outward physical manifestation to signal of ones own emotions. In short, 'tells' happen when you allow your body to show some sign of emotion. This is not a good thing the majority of the time. It happens unconsciously and when you unknowingly reveal emotion to the table, the table now has more information with regards to your hand. In poker you always want to give your opponents the least amount of information. A good player will pick up on your 'tell' and use it to his advantage to make calls and bluffs against you.
Getting rid of tells is one of the hardest things
to do and a real poker player never finishes working on eliminating his
poker 'tells'. A poker tell can be anything as small as a finger twitch
to something as big as a huge grin on your face. Obviously fixing the grin
would be much easier than to fix the finger twitch, especially if you don't
even realize your finger is twitching. Tells can come in other forms as well,
things like increased talking or taunting is very common. Most players
overlook their own 'tells' and a good player can pick up on this behavioral
change and adjust accordingly.
Fixing the problem of tells is as stated above a
life long quest against your subconscious. Many of the famous players have
all sorts of methods of trying to avoid revealing any emotion and it helps
compliment their style. Some people, usually aggressive poker players, try
to overload their opponents with information and overwhelm you in their emotion.
Usually this aggressive type of player will use talking and taunting to throw
you off your game. It doesn't sound too bad on paper but the problem is trying
to put out a lot of emotion and distract your opponents also serves as taking
your own mind off of yourself. Essentially you distract yourself and it can
result in tells that you don't realize your doing to get through to your
opponents; it takes more focus to maintain your own state of mind while trying
to distract the tables as well.
Another style of trying to avoid tells is hiding you. This can vary in degree but what I mean by hiding yourself is, for example, clothes that cover your body and that hide your emotions. Things as small as dark glasses, which are widely popular at casino poker tables, but also things like hooded sweat shirts or hats. Even costumes have been tried. The most common attempt at concealment in poker is wearing dark glasses but they are more and more commonly being combined with hooded sweatshirts, hats, and even eccentric clothes (again a distracter element).
Some poker players don't even do anything very eccentric or try to conceal themselves in fear of tells. A lot of players just go back to the stoic art of focus and maintaining an emotionless body and face. Whichever method you choose you have to remember that you can not allow yourself to be swept up in distraction or rely on clothes to solve your poker tell problems. You need to stay focused and maintain control of your body and emotions and most of all maintain your focus. Think before you act.
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