How To Spot A Sucker At The Poker Tables

One of the first axioms a poker player learns is the old adage: “If you can’t spot the sucker in the first 30 minutes; you are the sucker.” Well, not wanting to appear like the sucker, many players are averse to asking how they are supposed to spot the sucker.

Now most of the time spotting the sucker is relatively easy; the sucker is the person spewing chips to every player at the table, and seems to possess endlessly deep pockets and has a high propensity to reload! However, there will be plenty of times that you sit down at a poker table and the sucker is not so readily apparent. These are the situations where you’ll need to make sure you are not the sucker.

First off, there are three types of poker players: Good players, decent players, and bad players: And the old adage of spotting the sucker deals with poker players in these types of generalities. After 30 minutes you should be able to place every single opponent into one of these three basic categories -a lot of the time you’ll keep moving players between the decent and good category, but the bad players rarely break into either of the other two categories.

So, how do you differentiate between suckers, and decent players? Here are a few things to look for.

The first thing to look for is a player who is active. Active players tend to be in more than their fair share of pots, and tend to always be around at showdown. Active doesn’t mean the player is unconscious in their decision making; it simply means that when a marginal decision arises, they almost always stay in the pot.

Another thing to take a look at is specific decisions. Sometimes a player will be playing a seemingly solid game, but when they have to disclose a hand their ‘donkishness’ shines through. When a player does something so unorthodox it cannot have any logical reasoning behind it, you have a solid clue that they are a sucker.

The next thing to look for is a player displaying a certain type of body language. The body language you are looking for is a cross between dejection and anger. Players who are depressed are generally losing, which usually means they are either running bad, or just plain bad at cards. Angry players are usually on tilt, and any player who is on tilt is playing poorly, no matter how well they normally play.

The final thing to look for is a player who is drinking, nodding off, or has some other physical impairment. Whenever you run into a player who has been up for two days, or has been drinking heavily for hours you can be certain they are not playing well. Heavy drinking or staying up for days is a sign of one of two things: Either the player is on vacation and trying to have fun, or the player is stuck and trying to get back to even -which almost never happens!