Watching Better Palyers Play
If you talk to a lot of winning poker players, both live and online, you’ll hear them say that they spend a considerable amount of time observing great poker players. In a live casino this might be a little taxing on your patience and ability to see what’s going on, but online you can openly view high stake matches and pro players. The reason for doing this, even though you’ll probably never see their cards more than just a handful of times over the course of dozens and dozens of hands, is that you can still learn a lot from seeing how players call, make plays and act while in the middle of a hand.
Becoming a student of the game is really what separates the profitable players from the ones that lose their bankroll constantly. Outside of just reading poker books and watching DVD’s, you need to see real players in action to watch how some of the techniques you’ve read about are put into play. With online poker one of the only ways you can pick up on what your opponent has is through his betting pattern, and learning to recognize betting patterns will also hugely benefit you during a live game as well.
So next time you’re online waiting for a tournament to start up, jump into a few different rooms and see if you can learn anything from the players simply from watching them play while you yourself aren’t in any of the hands. You always realize more about players and their style when you’re not involved in the hand then you’ll ever learn while actually playing against them.
