It can take awhile for your poker game to progress through the early and middle stages of strategic poker play. As these variable skills are implemented with consistent success, the time has come to upgrade your game once more to an advanced level of poker strategies.
Adopting New Poker Tells Intentionally
Our last intermediate poker strategy article, “Learn your Tells, and Use Them!“, spoke of how to identify the poker tells you are already giving off, and use them to your advantage.
This next section is an expansion on that theory, teaching you how to adopt new poker tells to add to your arsenal of reverse psychology warfare.
Ranging Your Opponents Hands
Something professional poker players do all of the time is putting your opponent on a hand, and most of them are pretty darn good at it!
If you’ve ever watched Daniel Negreanu on NBC’s Poker After Dark, you’ve likely heard him guess exactly what his opponent is holding. While Negreanu has perfected the art, with seemingly psychic accuracy, we’ll at least get you started on the right path by teaching you how to put your opponent on a range of hands.
If you can narrow it down close enough, you’ll at least be able to determine the strongest hand you’ll need to beat before deciding whether to make that next call or raise.
Avoiding Challenging Players
If you find that there is a specific poker player type that gives you a frequently insurmountable challenge, it is not necessary to continue playing this kind of opponent. Shakespeare once said, “Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot that it do singe yourself.” Point being, trying to get revenge by repeatedly playing these player types will only come back to bite you in the you-know-what.
The easiest solution is to simply avoid challenging players. We’ll also discuss how to cope with challenging players when they cannot be avoided, such as in a tournament situation.
Variance in Poker
Adjusting to variance in poker isn’t just about the impending swings in your bankroll. Too many poker players think they have to win more than half of the time in order to be drawing a profit.
Actually, just winning a very small percentage of the time can be incredibly lucrative so long as you play your cards right; i.e. don’t filter chips into a lost cause, and use all of the beginner, intermediate and advanced poker strategies you’ve learned thus far to gain as many chips as possible when you’re on top.
It Really is All About the Eyes
In a live poker game, you’d be surprised just how much the eyes can give away. You would naturally assume that any poker player with any kind of experience at all would be very conservative with visible poker tells, especially something so obvious as the eyes. Luckily for you, that just isn’t the case.
We’ll give you a few tips on when and what to look for in the eyes, and of course, how not to let your own eyes get you busted.