Little Things that Add Up
When playing live poker, it actually pays to try a few psychological tactics that can often end up working heavily in your favour. Here are some tips to really working the table so that they do not pick on you.
Shake everybody’s hand and bring a box of cookies to share
This is a proven tactic to getting the whole table to like you and stay out of your way. Players will often then announce that they are sorry when they are about to re-raise you or check raise you since they want to repay the favour. This signals that they actually have a hand and do not want you to call them to preserve your chips.
Asking for a smaller raise
When a table is developing a preflop raise standard of more than three to four times the big blind, it is often productive to go about asking a player why they have to raise so much, or why they just can not just keep it at three times the blind. Eventually they will actually get the message and reduce their preflop raise.
Profile your opponents
Spend time getting to know your opponents. Are they the online internet pro who is playing perfectly within their bankroll and not afraid to go bust? Or the oil baron who is just participating for fun, but with not all that experience on them? Are they a rookie online satelliter who is clearly too nervous to be playing anything? All these come into consideration on how they will play out the tournament and whether they are folders or raisers.
Work on your own image
Try to look out for who else is paying attention and busy profiling their opponents and try to act out the opposite in order to confuse them.
Give these tips a try, they will make your passage to the final table much easier.
