Why you should be aware of your table image

You will have heard a lot about the importance of getting a read on your opponents at the poker table. Picking up on information they unwittingly give out, such as how often they play hands, how much they bet, the time they take to act and even if they are multi-tabling – playing more than one table at a time - online can help you determine how strong or weak they are in most situations.

It’s likely you’ve been advised to make notes on your opponents, bracketing them into a style of play such as tight, loose or even maniac. Online poker rooms have this function built into their software to help you.

In live poker games, the amount of tells given off is amplified because you get to see and hear how your opponents perform. You spot shaking hands, darting eyes, excited talk, swallowing, legs bouncing up and down – in fact, a huge amount of information is available if you learn how to look hard enough. It’s rare you come across a player with a genuine “poker face” who leaves you struggling to know what on earth he is doing.

While this resolve to observe everything about everyone is all well and good, and it will undoubtedly improve your reading skills and hence how to play poker better, many players forget one very important thing – all the other players will also be trying to get a read on you.

You might be the best reader of players in the world, as good even as Daniel Negreanu is famed to be, but if you yourself are an open book, all that good work goes to waste. Other players will suss you out and pick you off at will.

What would other poker players think of your style?

If you’ve sat at the tables for long enough, perhaps you play Texas Hold’em for free at play money sites like Replay Poker, which is a great place to start because you won’t risk a cent, you’ll have an accurate idea of your playing style. Perhaps you use a HUD display during online poker sessions to collect and display your playing data. At the very least, you’ll know how often you voluntarily put money into the pot and how often you come out with a raise pre-flop.

This basic information will classify you as a rock, one who rarely plays a hand, to a tight-aggressive player, who plays a few more hands but is likely to do so while raising and being the aggressor, to a loose cannon who plays way too many hands.

If you know you fall into one of these categories, then any player who has played 25 hands or more with you will have come to the same conclusion – they may have watched you play only one hand, when you had a monster like pocket kings, or they’ve seen you play 25% of your hands, mostly from late position and always with an opening raise, or perhaps they’ve seen you splashing around happily in just about every hand.

The point is, if they’ve nailed your style and image, you’re in trouble.

Why does your image help other players?

Once an opponent at the poker table has a read on your playing style, they can begin to second guess what sort of cards you may have in front of you and make a better-informed decision as a result. If they’ve also been observing other areas of your game, like if you always chase flush and straight draws, always min bet with aces or always check-raise with the nuts, then they’re getting pretty clued up on what you have, and whether they should fold, raise or trap you.

If you understand this concept and acknowledge other players have a grasp of your playing style, you can turn it to your advantage.

Mixing up your game will leave opponents confused

If you’re leaving everyone else at the table scratching their heads, you’re on to a winner. Here’s where you can turn your perceived table image to your advantage and use it to trap the unwary and make a tidy profit.

Let’s say you have a relatively loose image at the table, where your opponents see you play a lot of hands, so rightly assume your starting hand selection is open wide. This means they’re unlikely to give you any credit when you do catch a good hand. If you get dealt pocket aces in late position and, as is your habit, put a raise in, you’re more than likely going to get called.

If that caller is himself a tight player, then you can feel confident they have a premium hand, and you can take all their chips.

Flipping this around, if you have a tight image, and you suddenly come out firing, then your opponents are going to second guess you’ve got a great hand. The trick here is to bite the bullet and put in a raise or even pre-flop re-raise every now and then (best in late position) with a mediocre hand or complete bluff. The chances are, you’ll take down the pot there and then for some easy chips because everyone assumes you have a monster. But there’s a second benefit – if you did get called and went to a cheap showdown, exposing your less-than-valuable, probably losing hand, it will leave players thinking that perhaps you’re not a rock after all.

In other words, they’ll be unsure about what style you’ve got; you’re unpredictable. And if you’re unpredictable, they won’t be able to play so easily against you. Before long, you might start reaching final tables and, who knows, one day become World Series of Poker champion!

Play around with your image

When you start thinking about this concept at length, you’ll find many ways you can create an image and then use it to your advantage. Your cunning will know no boundary as you send out false signals and leave your opponents genuinely baffled.

Try it for yourself. And remember, the more your opponents are trying to figure you out, the less they’re concentrating on their own table image, so you have the chance to take advantage of them twice over.