David Sklansky, one of the most interesting personalities in the world of poker, has always emphasized the priority of making good decisions. Just as in blackjack, you shouldn’t deviate from Basic Strategy (without added information that is, like if you’re keeping a running count of the high cards), because in the long run this will bring you back towards winning, over time.
The challenge with poker is that you don’t have a set chart for strategy. You’re playing against other players and their personal strategies, as well as the odds of your own hand. The other players’ actions mean everything. You have to play awhile against them, observing their play, to get a feel for their decision-making guidelines. And you need to try to see when their behavior changes or seems to change, and try to guess what cards they probably have as a consequence. It’s a little like astrophysics, when you see colors and positions and brightnesses, and have to try to conclude whether a star is moving towards you or away, or if it’s that color to start with or is it blue-shifted because it’s moving away, or red-shifted because it’s coming this way? It can drive you insane, thinking of the possibilities.
So in order to make good decisions, you need to be able to see the different scenarios clearly. But I always found that personal cues helped round out the picture of a player, when you’re trying to nail down exactly what kind of player he is.
No, you don’t need to be Tim Roth in Lie To Me and be able to read a liar from the way he breathes or licks his lip before answering a question. I think it’s more worthwhile to look at how they act with their money and their bets. What exactly is the person doing? Is he raising on everything? Would you call it reckless, or is he intent on getting those raises in during this hand in particular?
There is the tilting player, the loose player, the generous bettor, and the extremely strategic player. Every one of them might have placed the same bet/raise at the same point in the hand, but in relation to what he did just before this hand, you can get a better idea of which one of the above he is.
Great Schnauzer 