Psychology in poker and how to exploit it

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.

[metsmaniac823]

Welcome to the forums, this is a great resource for all things poker. If you check the forum topics, you'll find the Psychology forum towards the bottom.

Your first thoughts of teaching your home game opponents to play right into your hands are interesting, not necessarily foolproof. You're never going to completely condition any of your opponents. I feel the best way to teach your friends (I'm assuming they're friends, yes?) is to toss them a beginner's book and tell them to ask anything after reading it.

Scouting your opponents ahead of time... eh... I mean obviously this wouldn't be realistic in tournaments, but even in ring games this might be a little difficult. I think finding a majority of players (especially a majority of donks) who have the patience to park themselves for an hour at the same table might be asking a lot.

People will come and go as they please, and if they don't conform to your plans, what can you do? It might be better to sit down and post blinds, maybe play a little tighter than usual for a couple rounds. You won't lose too much, and you can pick up tendencies as you're sweeping their chips away. PokerTracker and other programs can also be a huge help in netting the fish.

A+'s are tough to get in poker. Patience and a little luck as well as the information are all necessary too. Oh, and I didn't mention anything about how it's probably -EV to educate your opponents, but if it's your friends, this shouldn't apply.

Thanks for your feedback, by the way LETS GO METS. Zambrano never gets any run support but I guess that is OT.

I personally would rather play versus a table of good players in a NL SnG enviorment since bad players fail to recognize plays and take + hit bad draws (especially when there is a multi way call fest, even AA vs 3 random hands is less than optimal. Just my opinion

[Nigel]

[ QUOTE ]
I would rather play versus a table of good players

[/ QUOTE ]

Time to break out the Nomex suit!

[macdaddy991]

[ QUOTE ]
I personally would rather play versus a table of good players in a NL SnG enviorment since bad players fail to recognize plays and take + hit bad draws (especially when there is a multi way call fest, even AA vs 3 random hands is less than optimal. Just my opinion

[/ QUOTE ]

I think I have the exact opposite opinion.

Allow me to expand my quote further out of 8 players you dont want to be going up against 7 people who play terribly. Optimally you want a certain amount of each tight and loose players at a table, not all of one or the other