Your First Hour at the Poker Table
You sit down at a $2/$5 cash game table. You don’t know anyone there.
How do you go about profiling your opponents and building a strategy?
I asked my Twitter/X followers what they’d like to read about, and this was one of the questions I received.
Here are the five things I would focus on first.
1. Stereotyping
Judging a book by its cover is generally a no-no, but that rule goes out the window at the poker table.
Every play that you make is already based on incomplete information. Why not add one more guess if it points you in the right direction more often than not?
Younger people tend to play more aggressively. Older people tend to play tighter and bluff less.
Draw on your past experience at the tables and make some loose assumptions.
You don’t need to make massive adjustments based on these reads, but you’d be wasting an opportunity if you didn’t make small deviations.
Every time you play against someone, you’re trying to find the best play against the average of all players that person could be. If they’re going to be a nit 8/10 times and a maniac 2/10 times, play as if they’re on the nittier side – you can make adjustments over time as you get more clues.
Sometimes, you’ll be wrong. That’s okay! More often than not, you’ll make a good deviation.
I once made a read that an older gentleman would be very unlikely to bluff in a big pot, and I was wrong. Unfortunately for me, it happened to be on national TV. Oh well!
I’ve never regretted the play for a second. Given the information I had at the time, I did the best I could. More often than not, I’d have been right. That time just happened to be one of the nots.
2. Table Talk
The quickest way to profile players is based on what they tell you about themselves.
Are they a pro? Is this their first time playing?
Do they watch poker on TV? Do they watch training videos?
Do they use “GTO” poker lingo? Do they use it poorly, or do they use it well?
The overwhelming majority of players volunteer tons of information about themselves in the flow of normal conversation. You can pretty quickly guess who the strongest and weakest players at the table will be.
I have no ethical issues with asking questions to gain intel for the purposes of making reads, but I don’t do it personally. It feels a little too disingenuous for my taste, so I sacrifice the bit of money it costs me to engage in a natural conversation instead.
If you want to gather information with targeted questions, I say go for it. There’s nothing wrong with it if you don’t feel uncomfortable.
Some people who are naturally outgoing will have these conversations anyway. They’ll ask everyone where they’re from and what they do. They’ll talk about poker experiences. These conversations are rich with valuable information.
You can also learn so much from the way they talk about hands that have been played.
I once thought an opponent was a strong player until, hours into a session, I saw him bet the river with a weak top pair hand, get called, reluctantly show his hand, and then, after winning, say, “I didn’t like my hand so much once you called.”
“Wow,” I thought to myself, “This guy didn’t even know why he bet the river!”
If he’d have silently collected the pot, I’d have thought, “Cool. Good value bet.”
By letting me in on his thought process, he made me realize how flawed it was.
3. Table Presence
You can learn a lot from the way players handle themselves at the table.
Do they shuffle their chips?
Do they always know where the action is, or are they betting out of turn?
Do they bet, call, raise, check, and fold with confidence and comfort, or do they often look confused?
Sure, some players have played a ton of live poker, shuffle chips well, make every move decisively, and still play terribly.
But remember, you’re playing against the average of all the opponents they could be.
Experience correlates with skill.
Lack of experience is even more reliable. Unless you’re up against an online wizard who’s never spent time at a live poker table, someone who doesn’t know what to do with their cards and chips will be an inexperienced, weaker player.
You can even observe and learn how hard certain decisions are for them.
Are they taking a long time to c-bet in a spot that should be a c-bet 100% of the time? That means they don’t know that.
Did they take a very long time to call the river with a very clear calling hand? They likely either don’t know it’s a clear calling hand or they are nitty and will be easy to bluff.
This brings me to the next tip…
4. Showdowns, Showdowns, Showdowns
There is no greater source of information at the poker table than a showdown.
You can watch them bet, raise, and fold all day, but this only gives you so much data.
You may notice certain things, like an opponent seeming to cbet the turn frequently. Given how high-variance poker is and how few hands each player plays in an hour or two at a 9-handed poker table, you can’t make a good guess as to how aggressive they truly are.
They could very easily just be running hot.
Showdowns are irrefutable.
You get to see the cards they had and look back at how they played.
You know with certainty that they made those plays with those cards.
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking:
This guy is picking on me.
He double barrels a lot.
Wow, he’s aggressive!
… without seeing your opponent’s cards.
Until you’ve seen a showdown, the evidence you can gather from their actions at the table is very unreliable – usually more unreliable than guesses based on the way they look and what they’ve said.
Showdowns are gold. If you’ve tuned out after folding and missed most of the action, tune back in for the showdown and see what you can learn.
5. Making an Impression
This one isn’t about profiling other players, but about them profiling you.
Be aware of the image you portray.
The way you look, what you say, the way you move your chips and cards – they’re going to cause players to make some educated guesses about you.
Think about what those guesses might be.
If you don’t know, ask a friend! You can even ask someone you just met that day after playing a long session with them:
“Hey, what did you think I would play like when we started today?"
You’ll likely get an answer close to the truth.
Next, be aware that your early play is going to be your first impression, and first impressions last a while.
If you run a big bluff in the first five minutes of joining a table, and you get caught, you’d better believe people are going to remember it and categorize you as a bluffer.
Even if you don’t bluff again for the next four hours, they’ll likely still think of you that way.
You could try to make an impression intentionally with your play style, but I feel like that’s often too hard to control.
Instead, I let the hands play out as they will, and I take note of what I look like to them in the first thirty minutes.
Usually (but not always!), you want to play in a way that contradicts your opponents' image of you, so I’d often let any big plays early in a session impact the way I approach the game for the rest of the session.
Good Luck
I hope these tips help you feel more confident when you next sit down at a new table. May your reads be sharp and your bluffs convincing!
