Poker is a game with many subtleties, and many of them have to do with psychology, having nothing to do with cards themselves. A few of our common English expressions come from poker contexts, and this is probably a result of all of the psychology involved in good poker player.

The first two expressions that come to mind are ‘passing the buck’ meaning the responsibility (in poker of being the dealer) and ‘poker face’ to mean a face that could be lying. The poker face is one of the most interesting phenomena in psychology; most people don’t give it a second thought, but those who do agree that it’s one of the more interesting aspects of human nature. Some humans lie much better than others do; it seems that some people can never master a true bluffing expression.

The ability to bluff is the ability to lie, but it’s also the ability to show nothing. If you’re watching your poker opponents closely enough you will be able to see clear patterns in their behaviour. If you cash in on these patterns that you recognize, it could be the difference between going home the biggest winner and going home the biggest bluffer.

The other people at the poker table are extremely important. Sure, they’re important because they’re putting money in the pot that you hope to later take home, but more importantly than that, they are your key to beating them. Odd, isn’t it? It does seem odd that your opponents would be the key to beating your opponents, but that is absolutely the case. If you know your opponents, you will be able to beat them. Now, knowing your opponents does not simply mean that you’ve known them for years; in fact, knowing your opponents personally can be a negative influence on your poker game. Ideally, your poker opponents should be people that you don’t know at the beginning of the night, but that you do know at the end of the night.

That doesn’t mean that you should be engaging in conversations with them. Instead, you should be observing them. However, the best way to observe people without them feeling like you are is to engage in small talk with people around the table. If you look up from the table (presumably to direct your question to someone) you have plenty of time to scan the other players at the table. You don’t want to be the nervous guy checking everyone out from the corners of his eyes; that just creeps people out. You do, however, want to be the guy who learns the motions and eye movements of the other people at the table before other people pick up on these cues.

What you have to do is register each person’s behavior. Does one person always look up quickly if they have a good hand or a bad hand? Does someone shift their cards around if it’s a good thing they’re thinking or a bad thing? The idea here is that you’ve got to register behaviours and then file them away until you see what kind of hand they have. If you can come up with a pattern, you’re golden. You’ll be able to read these people at your table better than you can read yourself. In addition to calculating the odds of your hand being a winning hand, you should also be calculating what kind of people are sitting around you at the table. Only when you can perform the two simultaneously will you see your poker prowess really start to take off.