You want to be careful to keep something in if you are trusted with a secret. You don’t want to let somebody down and so you keep it in and hold onto it as a secret. Poker Face: Keeping a straight face and not revealing your “hand”. This means not sharing the details of what you know. Download Poker Face now and be in charge of what you reveal. You can listen on your computer or device or via our free app which you can access when you have completed your purchase. You can listen on your computer or device or via our free app which you can access when you have completed your purchase.
How to keep a poker face in a poker gameis one of those meta skills that are particularly important in live poker. Here’s a step by step process you can use to get rid of poker tells.
Keeping a poker face is a subskill of controlling your emotions. Once you get your emotions under control, your tells will get rid of themselves. If you’re not feeling anything, you’ll have no feelings to accidentally display.
Here are a few tips about keeping your composure and your poker face:
- Don’t try to fake out your opponents by acting.
- Get rid of your poker tells.
- Practice makes perfect.
- Learn to manage your emotions.
Develop a Good Poker Face
A good poker face is emotionless. Some new poker players try to fake out their opponents by acting, but that’s the easiest poker tell for an opponent to pick up on. The most elementary advice about reading other poker players is that someone who acts strong has a weak hand, and someone who acts weak has a strong hand.
So don’t try to look sad or frustrated when you have good cards. You’re not fooling anybody. Keep the same straight, emotionless face whether your hand is good or bad.
A blank face is hard to read.
How to Get Rid of Your Poker Tells
The expression on your face isn’t the only poker tell you have. Fidgeting of any kind is a typical tell, and a lot of times, poker novices don’t realize that they do this. And even if they do fidget, they think their fidgeting is the same regardless of what hand they have.
But the problem is that tells are unconscious. You don’t realize that you tap your fingers when you have a good hand. You don’t know that running your fingers through your hair is a sign that you have a bad hand.
Learn how to sit still. Learning to meditate can help with this skill.
Practice
If you play a lot of poker online, then you might think that showing your emotions during play is no big deal. But it creates bad habits that transfer to your live poker game. Use online poker as an opportunity to practice your poker face. During Internet poker games, focus on eliminating your poker tells, even though no one can see them.
Every time you sit down to play poker, even if it’s penny ante poker with your kids, you have another opportunity to practice your poker face. Take advantage of these opportunities.
Never Show Any Emotion
One way to get your emotions into check is to start taking the attitude that events are neither good or bad, they just are. You’ll win some pots and you’ll lose some pots. That’s the nature of the game. Practice equanimity.
Don’t struggle. Just let the game happen, and make correct decisions, one after another. If you’re struggling, your opponents will pick up on that and take advantage of it.
The Tao of Poker by Larry W. Phillips is a good book to read about this aspect of the game.
Poker isn’t just a game of math. It’s also a game of managed emotions and mental trickery. Learning how to keep a poker face in a poker game can be one of the toughest skills to develop as a poker player, but it’s also one of the most important.
Poker players who can’t keep a poker face are at a big disadvantage over players who can.
This page about how to keep a poker in a poker game was last updated on April 30, 2010.
How To Keep A Poker Face Playing Poker
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Online poker is great but sometimes you just need to take your game to the next level. You want to play on the stage in front of people; you want to get the chance to win big in a casino resort’s poker room or, perhaps, show off your skills in the poker room of a cruise ship.
Live poker is exciting, and can potentially be lucrative. But, as an veteran poker player will tell you, when you are playing a live poker game, keeping an unreadable poker face is crucial. Beginners often do not fully consider what it means to have a poker face – and the fact that they need to maintain it for the duration of the session. Beginners often consider game play and hands, but they don’t necessarily practice their body language or their facial expressions. From personal experience, I can tell you that many a hand can be won or lost on the strength of your poker face. Here’s how to keep yours strong even when you feel nervous and excited.
1. Don’t Think About Your Stresses
If you are dwelling on the bills you have to pay or your poor performance at work, it will be reflected in your posture and on your face, even if you don’t realize it, and it will betray the fact that you are nervous and unsure. Try to relax yourself before a game. Put other problems aside and focus on enjoying the game.
It’s best to try and put some distance between yourself and your other worries. If you are too concerned about other aspects of your life it will not only show on your face, but it will also make it more difficult to focus on your game.
2. Control Your Eyes
Even the smallest eye movements can potentially give you away. Unfortunately, many eye movements are completely involuntary, but they give your opponents a clear view of what you are really thinking. Before a session, practice keeping your eyes level, not flickering. Practice not looking from side to side without good reason during the game. On the other hand, you also shouldn’t stare fixedly into space or at an opponent – this never gives the impression that you are neutral, but instead that you are crazy.
It used to be the case that many players would wear sunglasses while playing live poker, as this helps keep eyes hidden and gives a more mysterious appearance. Nowadays, though, you’re better off just practicing away from the table, as wearing sunglasses to the table is often a dead giveaway that you’re a newbie.
3. Don’t Twitch
No, we’re not talking about Twitch, the online streaming platform. There are separate issues with streaming poker on Twitch.
We’re talking about actually making physical movements.
Your eyes are not the only body parts that can give you away. Your other body movements, as Joe Navarro, Mike Caro, and Zach Elwood would probably attest, are quite telling. Tapping your feet, scratching your head, biting your nails, picking your skin… all those sorts of behaviors typically belong to players who don’t tend to fare so well when playing live poker.
4. Have a Steady Voice
Even if you manage to keep your eyes and body still, and not reveal anything, your voice might still be an Achilles Heel at the poker table.
How so? Well, frankly, if you’re unable to keep the tone of your voice steady and neutral when you place your bets or avoid making changes in the tone of your voice, your opponents will take notice.
The best advice would be to try and keep calm and, especially if you’re nervous, speak only when needed in a steady tone of voice.
Aside from those four tips, we’re sure you could think of some other ones that’ll help you improve your poker face when playing live poker. Let us know some of them in the comments below.
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