Your table image

A common mistake that rookies make both in online poker and offline, is that they focus too much on not letting other players read them. It should be obvious to any reasonable poker player, that a winner needs to do far more than staying safe at the table.

A player who expects to make money, needs to go out there and manipulate opponents. He doesn’t need to confuse them about his table image, on the contrary, he wants them to have a very clear picture of the type of player he is.

In this respect, some people will go to great lengths to induce a certain table image about themselves, that they can later exploit. Thus, playing loosely preflop will create the impression that the player in question is a loose aggressive one. He needs to play it extremely tight on the flop though, or his acting will cost m ore money than it’ll rake in.

Then, when he knows people see him as a maniac, he’ll go on betting out on a monster, taking 1-2 other players down.

 

The good thing about the table image is, you don’t even have to bother creating one. If you’re a good player, and you’re capable of changing gears every now and then, you can just be your plain old self and allow the others to read your game (it’ll happen sooner or later anyways). When you see they have you read, just go on and change your strategy completely, while taking advantage of what the other players think that they know about you.

Good counterintelligence has won wars in real life in the past, it should work great in the war taking place at the poker table too.