POKER TIMING

 

It’s All About…TIMING!

 

After a fair amount of time of playing primarily online and occasionally live tournaments, I have recently been playing semi-regularly in a home cash game with the same lineup of players. It helped remind me of a less talked about important concept to always be aware of when playing in a home game. That is timing! I am talking about a few different timing concepts here. 

First off, it becomes all too common for many players that play in the same home game repeatedly to act prematurely. The more casual the game, the more often this happens. Whether it’s getting ready to muck cards pre flop before it is their turn or by getting raising chips in hand before it is their turn, many players often project their intentions well in advance of when they should. Ideally you want to have those players to your left at the table to take advantage of this valuable tell. I realize that you may want them on your right for different reasons based off of their play so obviously take that into consideration before selecting a seat, if you have that option.  

The second timing tell that I want to discuss is how quickly players act. There are many times that players who are bluffing forcefully and quickly act with a bet or a shove. I get it that this is not a 100% full proof tells but you must add it into the equation when are debating on a decision. Most players even novices take a little bit longer to decide with a big hand.

                So how do you take all this information and process it? The nice thing about playing in a home game is that you get to see the same players a lot which should help you formulate a game plan against their playing style.  The key to this is formulating a base line for a player’s actions then watch when he/she deviates from those actions. For example, with timing, if someone acts fast all the time then all of a sudden he/she acts very slow, something is different.  These are the situations that you are hoping to see your opponent’s cards to help to confirm if what you witnessed was valuable information. The negative of playing in the same game is that of course the other players can formulate a strategy against you based off how you play. When you play with the same group of people, you need to occasionally mix it up, especially when you are in hands against those that you feel are the better players. 

                The bottom line is that you should always be paying attention. You however do not want to make it overly obvious especially if you are playing with a lot of casual players. The better players have a way of making sure that they know what is going on in a game all while being very subtle. Be that player!

 

---Frank L. DiRe - Nerdthusiast content creator

Twitter: @FLD15