Hi, I just want to say that I am new to 2 + 2 and am looking foward to many interesting and thought provoking discussions in the future. It is good to be in a SERIOUS poker forum.



The psychology of players in poker is quite diverse and bares a good bit of similarity to the unpredictableness of the game itself that keeps us all playing. This rings just as true online as in person. In an extreme example you can take your own home game and perform covert psychological warfare. Some may argue with the morals of attempting to brainwash your friends for profit but that is besides the point....
I play almost daily 2-3 SnG home games with buy ins ranging from 20-40 and usually 6-8 players. Now my friends range in skill from very bad to beginner and I am easily the best player among them. Since I noticed that a profit could be made, also to uphold my reputation as a card player I decided that I would begin a long term training of the individuals in my home game.
I started by attempting to improve the worse players of our group so that they would become more conscious of their ability to fold. I also taught them to calculate pot odds, implied odds, statistics, etc. My bottom line immediately increased as players learned to make laydowns. I also made the habit of making some joint online ventures in which I would play their money and my own and more importantly they would watch my play and begin to get a feel for it. I benefited by knowing what these players thought,based on their prior controlled experience, as well as having them perform in the way I taught them in specific situations giving me intimate knowledge of how they were playing since Iconditioned them to do so.
Now online you have no such benefit of knowing your competiton for the most part. To gain an edge I like to shadow a table for as much as an hour taking extensive notes about their actions. Then when I join the table after my stakeout I know things about them and they no nothing about me so I find a more efficient way to choose my table and player strategy. In limit games this can provide a large enough edge to increase your profit margin if you can adjust to the table properly. In a game where the person who can gleam the most information is usually the victor the man who does his homework gets the A +


I appreciate feedback of all kinds thanks for reading

.Race.