Your Table Image at Texas Holdem

How important is it to build an image whilst playing online poker? I have heard numerous players and poker theorists talk about the importance of image whilst playing poker and I don’t necessarily agree with much of what I have read. It is a common but yet little understood fact that your actual card sequences themselves create your table image for you.

How can this be so? Well for a start, let us imagine that you sat down in a holdem poker game and the action on your table was very aggressive. There were raises and re-raises all over the place and on top of that, you were dealt a succession of junk hands. If this process had been going on for a couple of rounds then the other players would start to notice that you had been playing very tightly indeed.

What they may not have noticed is that you were simply folding weak hands to bets, raises and re-raises. In their mind, you have been folding a lot and are therefore a nit or a rock who will only ever play with the nuts or some other string holding. This is presuming of course that they do not know you from previous sessions. It also assumes of course that they are not using tracking software against you like Poker Office (which I use) because if they are then they may already know what type of player you are.

The natural sequence of your cards may be the one pivotal factor in how your opponents play against you. In this sequence that I have just mentioned, look at what may happen with the image that your cards have cultivated for you. You are being seen as a tight rock and the natural follow on from this is that your blinds will certainly be attacked more often.

You should definitely be prepared for this for when it happens and instead of simply folding to aggression with junk hands all the time, try playing back with a re-raise every now and again with speculative hands like small pocket pairs or suited connectors or some other respectable holding. In this instance, you are not playing your hand but the actual situation itself.

You must also be prepared for players calling your raises more frequently. They know that you are a rock and that a raise by you is more than likely with high cards. So when you raise with A-Q, they call your raise on the button with J-10 with the simple goal of taking the pot away from you from the flop onwards.

When the flop comes 9-6-4 rainbow then they suspect that you have missed. So when you continuation bet the flop, they float you which is the process of calling on the flop simply to see what you do on the turn. If you show weakness then they step in and take the pot away from you and your image as a rock has strengthened their belief that they can pull this play off.

Do keep in mind though that image plays work both ways and if you have been betting and raising then keep in mind that your opponents may be tagging you as a wild player. This may not be the right time to launch a bluff or try to steal the blinds. What I am trying to point out here is in how the natural series of hands can dictate what your image is and it may pay to try and tap into that because it may just help you to ascertain what your opponents are thinking of you.

This article was written by Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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