Taking Advantage of Personality

A good poker player is no one thing. It’s not just one characteristic that defines a poker player but many different qualities that define a poker player. A poker player should be aggressive, but at the same time patient, a poker player should be good at the math of poker, but at the same time good with the psychology of poker, and a poker should learn how to play both premium hands and learn how to win with terrible hands. One of the most important qualities of a poker player, is the ability to get quick reads on the type of poker player they are involved in a hand with and the other opponents that are sitting at the same table.

The first thing you should always do when walking in a casino filled with cash games or anywhere that has multiple tables of cash games is scope the area down thoroughly. When you are sitting there, waiting for your name to be called, you should notice all the different personalities at all the different tables and try to pick one that you think best suits you and that you think you can get the most money out of.

You’ve heard of stereotypes and to never judge a book by its cover? Well forget about all that when you sit down at the poker table. When you sit down you should try to put a peg on every single that is sitting at your poker table. Making quick reads is crucial and it can rocket you off to a great start in early play (another advantage of being the new person at the table is that no one knows you yet, so take advantage of this and play aggressive right away). Get a note of who the aggressive players are, who the weak players are, who the rich people are (these people have no problem getting their money in the pot because they can just buy right back in), who the people are with gambling problems are, who the calling stations are, who the mathematicians are, and who is always just waiting on monster hands.

The people you should be looking for the most are rich people. People who are sporting their $600 outfits are usually the people that will give their money away (just make sure they don’t make their money by playing professional poker). You should try to be in as many hands as possible with these type of people because most of the time you are going to get paid off.

Another person to take advantage of is the aggressive player. Every once in a while, you should re-raise the aggressive player because that’s what aggressive players fear the most – the re-raise. Most aggressive players are just trying to take down as many small pots as they possibly can, and when you re-raise aggressive players you will usually notice that they will give up their hands easier than you may think.

Another type of player that you should take note of right away is what you call a “calling station.” These are usually your beginner players that play pairs really hard or just plain not know what they are doing and call everything down. Another rookie mistake is that they always try to bluff beginners like this thinking that they will fold, but these calling stations never fold, and you should b e weary of them. Bluffing against a calling station is not something that you should be doing because they are going to call you down with a pair of 9’s and you will lose the hand.