one of the main the main things that i have been experimenting with over the past few weeks is table talk. im coming from 2 different schools on the subject: the daniel negreanu mr. nice-gue, and the phil helmuth bastard. and ive found that these 2 styles work best against different types of players.
mr. nice guy works best against friendly players: the type of people youd sit down and have a beer with.
mr. bastard works best against players who think they are really tough. if u can find one of these guys at an otherwise really soft table with this guy and prod him right you can make a lot of money.
i think that under the right circumstances, mr bastard can make more money, but he is a much bigger risk. if u dont read the table properly, it will totally backfire.
some other mr bastard cues that are good are: against a female player insult the fact that she is a woman. this can be particularly strong against the right women, but against strong players it is a definitely a liability.
against really macho players, the best thing to do is find a particular play that he made that wasnt very good or that u can make seem like it wasnt very good. this will really bother him, and youre likely to get some extremely loose calls from him.
mr nice guy gets a lot more folds, but he doesnt really have a many key opponents to talk about.
i still have a lot more work to do in this area, of course.
this is my first post, so any feedback would be nice: helpful, not, innane, useful, worthless, etc. im also looking for a topic for a full-blown essay if anyone has any suggestions. obviously no one can take much of what say seriously at this point in my carreer but i hope to change that soon, if not by my playing then by my writing. thanks, lm.