Player categories
As Sun Tzu would say “know thy enemy and know thyself and you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” Through continual analysis of your playing sessions, you will come to know yourself, but you also need to pay just as much, if not more, attention to understanding your poker opponents.
Psychologists say that there are 18 different types of people or personalities. As a poker player I have identified three types of poker players. They are advanced players, novice players, and novice players who think they are advanced players. You do not want to be in this third group because those players cannot improve their games. They are not self examining because they think they already know everything. Just by the fact that you are reading this book you are likely an advanced player or a novice. You are not in the third undesirable category because you are actively researching your game and seeking improvement.
Wherever you fall in the categories, you need to figure out the abilities of your opponents. You will judge the other players by watching their betting and observing what cards they have (if you get to see them) when they win pots. When you enter a poker game, watch and learn so you can take a good measure of your opponents. It is poker after all and you do not have to start betting right away. A friend of mine told me that he never plays his first 20 hands regardless of what cards he is dealt. His approach accomplishes two things for him. His slowness to give action to the game establishes him in the minds of his opponents as a conservative player, and he also gets to use the time during the passing of 20 hands to focus on the other players and study them without the distraction of being involved in his own cards. This strategy especially makes sense when you enter a new card game with people you do not know.
Whether or not you commit to foregoing your first 20 hands, you still need to continually study your opponents. Let’s look at player traits to help you identify who you’re up against.
Traits of Advanced Players
The attitude of an advanced player will likely give him or her away. They will have an air of confidence and will not ask the dealers any questions about procedures. They generally will not get rattled by bad beats and instead take them in stride because they know that such things happen all the time. Any type of person can be an advanced poker player. Try to spot them when pots are being awarded because they will 1) be the winner more often; and 2) have strong pocket cards.
When you get to see a person’s hand at the showdown, take note of their pocket cards and see if that person was starting out with a super premium, premium, sub-premium, or poor hand. While taking the person’s position into account, you can judge how risky the player’s behavior was. If that player more often than not appears to be playing strong hands under the right circumstances, then you are looking at a reasonably well-advanced poker player.
Traits of Novice Players
In general, novice players tend to over value their hands. They know the rank of hands and what a big hand is, but they still do not grasp how the value of a hand is constantly shifting as the betting rounds progress through the flop, turn, and river. A novice player might get dealt a pocket pair, which is good, and get excited about it, but then that player will fail to take into account his or her position and what could be happening in the hands of the other players. Pocket pairs are a great start but not necessarily a great finish.
You can also spot novice players at the showdown if their hands are filling up to a winner by almost total luck. Did someone have pocket cards in the poor or sub-premium category that just happened to make a straight on the river? Such things might make a person feel brilliant, but he or she is probably playing in a very risky manner that will ultimately result in more losses than wins.
We all should buy novice players a drink. They are the grease in the axles of poker. They bring money to the table and more often than not lose it, which is our gain. In the poker world, you want novice players making bad or inexperienced decisions.
We all start as novice players, even the champions. Staying a novice, however, is totally not the goal. If you are new to poker, take to heart the following bit of information.
Advice for Rookie Players
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Continue: Poker tells
