The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a poker face as ‘An inscrutable face that reveals no hint of a person’s thoughts or feelings.’ In poker parlance, that’s the winning ticket when you’re going up against savvy poker players intent on bringing you down.
The devil is in the details – the minutia. Believe it or not, poker is less about playing the cards in your hand than it is about playing the people at your table.
Your body language can be a dead giveaway in face-to-face poker games. A nervous giggle, a twitch, a betting pattern, or a peculiarity. That’s all it takes for a seasoned veteran to take you down. These characteristic behaviors fall within the poker psychology wheelhouse. Contrary to popular opinion, poker-faced psychology applies in person and online.
Sit back, relax, don’t get too comfortable – we’re about to crack open some hard truths!
How Does A Poker Face System Work in Online Poker Games?
Let’s get down to brass tacks: A poker face describes conduct, appearances, and posturing. Every single one of these things applies to online poker games, too. In face-to-face poker games, we often see the characteristics– the idiosyncrasies – of our opponents. These are useful insofar as they can be used for prediction purposes. However, when you study poker psychology through professional poker guides, you quickly realize very important things. Like this: Details Matter.
Number one – you don’t need to be in somebody’s presence to pick up on their dead giveaways. It’s much easier to observe somebody’s behavior and sense their frustration, anxiety, anger, unease, or anticipation when you are physically seated at the table with them.
But, a fascinating field of study is dedicated expressly to the inimitable poker face in online poker games. It’s a real thing, and there are failsafe ways to gauge a player’s state of mind based on how they play.
Let’s assume we are virtually seated at a ring game, an SNG, or an MTT. Any poker room worth its salt provides players with a toolbox of resources, including a countdown timer within which to act, bet sizing options, on-screen avatars, etc.
Granted, we have fewer potential tells to work with. People hide behind the veil of anonymity with social media, the Internet, and online games. You can pretend to be anyone you want to be. Detractors are none the wiser. But poker players are a special breed. They are a force of nature in the gaming arena.
Even if they are blinded, professional poker players can pick up on nuanced behavior to determine whether a player is holding the nuts or pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes. In other words, there are ways to tell if you’re bluffing in online poker.
Consider a scenario where everyone has 30 seconds to act. You can raise, check, fold, check-raise, etcetera. What will you do to win the game? How quickly will you make that decision? Then there is bet sizing. What are you prepared to bet when the going gets tough? Will you go all-in on a potential showdown? Will you check or raise?
Now It’s Time for the Big Reveal
Any poker game, including social poker games, requires players to make tactical and strategic decisions. Free poker games remove the attendant risk of pay-to-play poker games, but that’s largely irrelevant to this topic. Even in a tournament where virtual gold coins are used, rather than cold, hard cash, every player has to play a finite number of chips to play with.
You are out of the tournament if you exhaust your supply of chips through reckless betting. Of course, re-buys are the exception. How you manage your poker chips says a lot about your abilities and the cards you are holding. We’ll leave it at that!
The poker pros who offered us this sage advice requested that we hold back just enough to keep the readers and players guessing. They don’t want to give everything away just yet. In the interests of fairness, it is essential to point out that a player who routinely procrastinates during betting action indicates a lack of etiquette and a great degree of uncertainty.
These two elements tell a lot about a person’s character, their state of mind, and the likelihood of them taking down a monster pot. Observe players at the virtual poker tables. That’s the best way to analyze behavior. If you notice a player routinely sitting out and then that player suddenly stops folding and starts playing – watch out – they probably have a premium starting hand!