Psychology is an essential but often overlooked weapon in the smart poker player’s arsenal. An understanding of psychology can help tip the game’s balance in your favor. Knowing your psychological makeup can be just as valuable as quickly analyzing the other players at the table.
Patience and self-awareness
Don’t sit down at a high-stakes poker game without having an objective sense of your strengths and weaknesses. Keep your emotions in check and don’t let essential confidence tip over into pride, which, as the proverb says, inevitably precedes a fall. Be patient and wait for your moment.
The tilt trap
The worst habit that a poker player can slip into is self-delusion. When combined with uncontrolled negative emotions like frustration, anxiety, and fear, it can lead to a condition known as tilt. Tilt describes a player who lets their feelings negatively impact their game without realizing it, becoming reckless and sloppy until they inevitably crash out.
Knowing your psychology will help you avoid the tilt trap, but knowing the signs will also let you exploit this weakness in others.
Player profiling
Poker psychology dictates that there are four basic playing styles: tight-passive, tight-aggressive, loose-passive, and loose-aggressive. Not every player fits neatly into one of these boxes, but everyone in a game can be placed on a spectrum defined by these four points.
Observe your fellow players closely to see where they sit on this spectrum, then adjust your style accordingly. Meet a passive player with aggression, and a tight player with some calculated bluffing. Find the cracks in their armor and execute an appropriate strategy.
The art of bluffing
The psychology of the bluff is all about choosing your moment. Even the most confident player will have times in the game when they are uncertain or risk averse. Watch the game through their eyes. If you were in their shoes, would you call your bluff? Take their player profile into account as well as their position and stack size.
Poker tells
There are two kinds of poker tells: betting pattern and body language. In the former case, simply watching someone play can tell you a lot about the hand they’re holding. If you know something about their previous form, that helps too.
Body language cues, or physical tells, are also easier to read the longer you observe someone. It’s all about mannerisms and unconscious gestures, some unique to the individual, while others universal. Once you recognize them, these tells can reveal a great deal about a player’s feelings, and by extension how their game is going.
Positional awareness
A player’s position at the table can have a significant impact on their game, as it affects the information at their disposal. Positional awareness helps you to predict player behavior. Those taking the first turn have the least information, while those at the other end have the most. Use this awareness in determining your starting hand, bets, and bluffs.
At the gaming table, knowing poker psychology can be your ace in the hole, giving you that extra advantage you need.
