The changing style of poker
Not too long ago, the great world-wide industry that is poker now, was not much more than a little backroom pastime, something to do among friends on a quiet Sunday afternoon, playing for money or just matchsticks.
Today the WSOP, WPT and EPT turn over money at about the same rate leading professional sports do. Counting the cash flowing through online poker
rooms as well the amount probably exceeds one's wildest expectations. Poker has indeed changed a lot during the past decade and player's style has changed with it.
In the past, young, rookie poker players usually took the natural shy approach to the game playing it tight and only coming forth on really strong hands. With their limited skills and most importantly limited bankroll they were easily intimidated by seasoned pros. Nowadays all this has changed. Newbies wying to ascend through the ranks as fast as possible and dominated by an acute thirst for poker-income are probably the most aggressive players of all.
Getting to know one's opponents is of utmost importance at the poker table. The best – the ideal- poker player is probably the one who is neither too loose nor too passive, or tight for that matter. Something close to this ideal setup can be found in World Class poker players, but remember: every player has a weak point. Even if you can't clearly pin the tag: tight or loose or passive, on a player, the reality is he's bound to be the blend of these characteristics with one or the other feature predominant.The finer the blend and the tougher to figure out, the better the player.
Another important feature of the good poker player ( besides being hard to figure out) is how fast he/she can figure others out. There are two dimensions to this game though: the offline aspect, and the online one.
In a real life poker game, with actual people sitting around a poker table the figuring out of the oppenents is not only based on observing their style of play, but also on noticing gestures and telltale bodylanguage.
Someone playing at an online casinos or an online poker room is deprived of these opportunities, however good poker players, specially the new breed ones, used to online poker rooms, can figure somebody out solely based on what moves they make during the course a several hands.
Table selection, another important factor one can juggle around with is made really easy in online poker. Why is table selection important? - one might ask. Simply because whether you can bring your best game depends greatly on who you play with.
A table full of tight players is a good table, another table that has loose players only is again a good choice, a table full of rocks again.
A table that has players of all extremes at it is probably one you should avoid at all cost.
The explanation to the above said is simple; just think about it, in poker you play against several people at the same time. If they all act alike, the strategy you apply to one of them works for all and makes you a clear winner. ( just act aggresively at a tableful of tight players and before you know it you'll be on a roll stealing blinds on nothing but potatoes, likewise act tight with loose players. This'll make you drop a few blinds but when the hand is indeed strong you can more then reel these guys in and shoot them with their own weapon.)
If everybody acts a different playing-style at the table then none of the above strategies work. They might work for a few players but they'll never work for all, and so you'll end up constantly loosing.
As the saying goes: ' you might be able to fool some of the people all the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you darn sure ain't gonna be able to fool all of the people all of the time.'
Bear that in mind as it has never been more in-place than in the case of poker.
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