We've
been talking for a couple of weeks about how to induce your opponents to make
mistakes. So far, I have given you a couple of technical examples (small raises
under the gun; betting a strong made hand on the flop and then "nervously"
checking the turn) that might help bamboozle your opponents into
misunderstanding your cards in specific situations.
In a more general
sense, you can also help them to misunderstand you - you the player, you the
person. As I've written before, I'm not above exploiting the mileage to be had
from being blond and female. In the Premier League Poker tournament for Channel
4, while the big boys said I was a mass of tells, too weak and too nervous (to
my face, as well as from the commentary box), I thanked them for their advice,
giggled a bit, added lipstick, and quietly banked $35,000 over the series.
There are plenty of other ways to put
misleading ideas into opponents' heads. One obvious way is to play in what
seems to be a very tight manner: fold most hands, pause before folding to make
the hands seem bigger, stack your chips with obsessive neatness, and it should
be easy to run juicy bluffs later - or make a big call when they can't resist
bluffing you.
But what's more fun is the reverse: to play in a way that
looks looser than it is. If you make a lot of early raises, which don't cost
you much, people take ages to notice that you never make big late bets without
a real hand. Raise cheaply and frequently pre-flop; appear to be enjoying
yourself (chat, laugh, order drinks); and your big-river bets will get called.
When you turn over a big hand, they'll just think it was unlucky timing.
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