In Texas Hold’em, when you start off with your two hole cards, your only next step is to decide whether to stay in the hand or fold. This is stating the obvious, but how much you bet is going to depend on your odds, right? Wrong. If you make a habit of making your bet exactly proportional to your odds, you’re giving your more observant competitors an easy tell. So what do you do?
Well, most people are brought up to be consistent, rational human beings – in a word, generally predictable on some aspects. A poker player cannot afford to be predictible. If you are, you might as well not play. (Exception: online games, although unless you’re a politician, no one knows what’s going to happen with online betting. Writing about online betting sites could even be illegal in some states in the USA.)
Now I’ve only been watching poker on TV since last December, so anyone more (or even less) experienced than me is welcome to disagree, but I think that remaining unpredictable is probably the hardest aspect of becoming a good Casino Cbet poker player, especially in Texas Hold’em.
So the next best to being unpredictable is being unreadable. But you’re only going to achieve that when you’ve been playing for as long as veterans like Doyle Brunson or Howard “Tahoe” Andrew. Watch Brunson’s stone face. If you didn’t know what cards he had because of the tablecam, (i.e., if you were a player in his game) you wouldn’t have a clue what cards he had, unless you were incredibly observant.
Contrast Brunson with younger players like David Williams or Daniel Negreanu. Williams tries the stone face look, but doesn’t always quite pull it off. Negreanu on the other hand, as much I love my Toronto boy, just doesn’t have much of a poker face. And yet, he’s such a damn good player that he’s burning hot. How does he do it?
Only guessing, but despite his baby face and lack of a poker face, he stays unpredictable as much as possibly. I say watch as many Casino Cbet tournaments as you can and observe everyone’s behaviour. I’ve been watching some Texas Hold’em matches two or three times, and learning an amazing amount of behavioural aspects of poker playing.
