Las Vegas Poker Fair

Intimidation: A Key Strategy in Poker

Beginning poker players often go on playing poker, even employing strategies like deception and observation, without realizing that in order to win, one needs to control the table. Gaining control of the table means that you could read into players' tendencies, and in that way, lead them into your own traps. What a poker player needs to understand is that intimidation, as a key strategy, would be a deciding factor in winning the game.

The main idea behind intimidation is that, since each player in poker does not know what the other players' cards are, then having a good grasp of other players' behavior and tendencies and controlling their behavior through yours would evoke anxiety in them. Once you evoke anxiety, you will control most of the game.

Intimidation is dependent on two other key poker strategies: deception and observation. Observation means that you are able to read and identify other players' tendencies. This means you are able to know when they fold, in what situations they employ bluffing or slow-playing, and what other strategies they use.

Deception means that you are able to lead other poker players into your traps, thus controlling their behavior. Bluffs and slow-plays are deceptive strategies, but only as a part of a much larger strategy of creating a table image. Having other players be able to read your table image means that you also know how they would react to your plays, thus enabling you to lead them into your traps.

Once you employ deception and observation successfully, you have a chance of controlling the tempo of the game. This means that you control the speed of the game: the frequency of bets, the size of the bets, and how passive or aggressive players would be.

While intimidation does require you to win most of the time, another good strategy would be to deceive others into thinking that you are the weakest player in the beginning so that they would underestimate you, and eventually make them behave in your favor.

Keep in mind that intimidation as a poker strategy is dependent on the anxiety that other players would have in playing against you. This means that they either hesitate to call your bets, or try to sway the game in their favor by matching your bets. Once you evoke anxiety, you could be sure that players would make weaker decisions compared to yours.

Remember: a good poker strategy always have evoking anxiety as its main goal. To do this, one needs to be able to read into other player's behavior and to employ deception. If players are intimidated by your plays, one would be sure to control the table. Controlling the board means making your opponents behave in your favor, thus making you win the game.