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Identifying players and adjusting your play

Poker is mostly a game about people. Although it has cards, a large luck element and different ways of betting, at it's core it is simply a game of psychology. Each player has their own views on the game, their own particular weaknesses and strengths, and their own ways of doing things. As a result, to become a good player requires you to become quickly used to identifying players and adjusting your play accordingly.

This can be quite tricky at points, as it often takes a long time to start picking up on the nuances of players games - particularly when playing online where you cannot properly talk to someone or watch them play. However, online you have the great ability to look through hand histories and see mucked cards. Where as live, where it is not common to see a player request to see a mucked hand, online you can see any mucked hand played while you are at the table. This can give you a great insight into a specific player very quickly - and must be constantly taken advantage of if you want to succeed in the online arena.

Identifying players has another great poker bonus - it disguises your play beautifully. If you are simply playing your hands in accordance with the player type that you are involved with, your play becomes very unpredictable to an outside observer. As you will be playing loose against tight players, tight against loose players and a middle way with good players, it is very difficult for your opponents to pick up on exactly what playing style you have.

Identifying the other player types around you is arguably the single most important thing that you have to do when you sit down at the table. In order for you to be able to exploit weaknesses in an opponent's game, you first have to be able to identify those weaknesses. At the low stakes the weaknesses can be extremely obvious, such as simply calling too much or making the wrong sized bets, where as at higher stakes mistakes can become more subtle, although they are all still there. Always remember that in order to succeed at any limit you will have to be able to size up your opposition as quickly as possible - forget it at your peril.

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• Poker
• Marcus Bateman