Poker Talk

This is probably one of the biggest tells that people have in their games and they don’t even realize it. Think about how you play your hands before the flop and you will quickly understand what we are talking about here. How much do you raise pre-flop when you are sitting on AA? How much when you only have a small pocket pair?

A lot of players will make a huge raise on one or the other and then play the opposite with the opposite hands. When you do this, you are telling anyone that is paying attention exactly what you have. For instance, you are a player that gets overly aggressive or and raised 10x the blinds with a small pocket pair or you push all in every time when someone raises in front of you with the same hand. When you have AA or KK, you tend to make a small raise of 3x and possibly just call a big raise in front of you hoping for action.

Any decent player is going to be watching you and all you need is a few showdowns for them to know exactly how you play. Forget about trying to vary your raises pre-flop to keep people off balance because it is very easy to lose track of where you are in your raises and actually outsmart yourself here. The trick to being a successful pre-flop raiser is to bet the same amount every time regardless of what your hand is. If you are the first to raise, pick your number and stick with it every time you jump into a hand. If you raise someone who has raised, raise their bet the same amount as you would raise the blinds.

Let’s assume that the blinds are $10/$20. When the action gets to you, you want to raise so regardless of what you are holding, you will make it $120 to go. If someone had made it $60 to go before the flop, you can raise their raise 6x so you can make it $300 to go here. If players are paying attention, they are going to see that no matter what you have, you are pumping the pot by a 6x raise each and every time.

All you are going to need is a handful of showdowns to have everyone confused when they get into a hand with you. You need to do this early and often at the beginning of the session and show a variety of hands. If you are heads up and folding, show those weak hands that you raised 6x the blinds with just like you had to show the KK in a showdown.

The purpose of showing here is make sure that everyone knows you are capable of playing poker 450 the same way you will play AA. Once you are in their head, you can back of showing your cards and play normally. Now when you are in the pot, they have no idea what you have and will tread very carefully around you. This is going to enable you to pull off some major bluffs and also create a lot of action when you really do land some nice hands.