Understanding How To Use Observation In Poker

February 25th, 2010

By all accounts, a person’s ability to observe everything that is going on, make sense of these observations, and use them for advantage is a key component to effective poker playing. Like any skill, it takes a lot of deliberate effort and practice to become an effective poker observer, but doing so will radically improve your game and your chances for success. A player’s observational skill is one of the key factors that differentiate good poker players from bad ones.

Observing the Game in Action

Keeping a close eye on all the cards as well as the size of the pot is a very important part of playing poker and takes a conscious effort to do. The goal when observing the cards is to determine the odds that the card or cards that you need will come up as well as the likelihood that the cards needed by other players have either come up already or will come up. Plainly this is more important in some games than others, for example it is considerably more important in stud poker where there are no community cards and a number of each player’s cards are visible on the board. You also have to keep track of those cards that have already been removed from play by way of players folding.

A lot of this tracking and calculating is not necessary when playing online poker because most online poker rooms provide tools that do it all for you. While this can certainly be helpful and makes it much easier for people playing online it also means that their playing skills will probably not transfer from an online poker room to a live game very well simply because the player will not have developed the skills needed to make useful calculation without the help of the computer. If you ever intend to play in live games, it is probably worth the effort to start building up your observational skills long before you ever sit down at a live table regardless of how well you may fair online.

Observing the Other Players

Remember that in poker you are playing against the other players at the table as opposed to the house, so the more information, patterns, and habits you can detect by observing the other players the better the likelihood that you will be able to use this information to your advantage in the game. An experienced observer should be able to detect what style of player they are up against, meaning whether they are cautious and conservative (tight) or wild and risky (loose), as well as their basic skill levels. Understanding this information about the other players gives you a good idea of how they will likely respond to any given move allowing you to manipulate them into making mistakes you can benefit from.

Your ability to observe the other players is significantly curtailed when playing poker online since you cannot actually see the people directly. This means there is virtually no chance of identifying “tells” or physical clues about what the other players are doing. Nevertheless, you can still determine their style of play and their skill level easily enough. Many online poker rooms have installed featured which track a lot of this information for you and provide it in a statistical format, however you should keep in mind that this information can be faked so you should rely more on the play you actually observe than on the statistical information provided.

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Beginner Poker Tips