Table demeanour

Live Poker / Marcus Bateman / 13 April 2010 / Leave a Comment

Barry Greenstein (far right front) and Phil Ivey (far right back) both seem to understand table demeanour

No matter what the game throws at you, make sure that you give your opponent no clue as to how you feel about it.

One thing that many online players find difficult when they first start playing in serious live games is keeping their table presence calm and constant. Poker is a game where it is important not only to not give off tells about the strength of your hand, but also to not give out tells about your general mental state.

If anything, letting players know that you are frustrated or tilting is much worse than any general tell about your hand, as it will enable opponent's to outplay you on numerous hands as they observe your behaviour and general play deteriorating.

Arguably the two greatest players in poker to study in terms of improving table demeanour are Phil Ivey and Barry Greenstein. Both these players give very little insight into how they are playing or feeling either during hands or after them. They seem to respond pretty much the same way regardless of the hands outcome (or how they played it for that matter), and even the most astute opponent would struggle to work out much about their mental state from their table presence.

Compare this to a player like Phil Hellmuth or . These are players that frequently go off the boil in response to various situations at the table, with the result that both of them were/are widely regarded as complete fish in high stakes cash games, where self control and discipline beats card skill in the long run. A breakdown in table demeanour is one of the clearest and most obvious tells available in poker - and both these players are great examples of what happens when you wear your emotions on your sleeve in cash games.

Table presence makes a huge difference in any game of skill, and one of the true greats was world champion backgammon player Tim Holland. As Jon Bradshaw writes of him in his book Fast Company:

"As the game began a small crowd gathered around the table. He was unaware of them, playing fluently and with a kind of rapt indifference. He did not speak; he did not smile; his eyes rarely left the table. There was a palpable arrogance in his play. He rolled the dice and moved the men about the board with the poise of a man who knows that victory is only a matter of time.''

No matter what the game throws at you, make sure that you give your opponent no clue as to how you feel about it. Information is king in poker, and some of the most serious tells you can give out are to do with how you behave after bad beats and bad play.

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