What’s your poker face like? Can people suss you out? Can they tell when you’re lying? I’ve heard it takes people years to master their poker face.
When playing poker or any other card game, the trick is to have a straight poker face. You have to keep the same face throughout the game, even if you have a rubbish hand! Don’t let them know and give the game away! If you can’t do it, try thinking of something serious. This way you keep a straight face!
What is Poker Face?
Still you don’t know what is poker face? The dictionary states, “A face on a person that shows no emotion, often called poker face because in the game of poker it would be foolish to show any emotional traits that might screw the game for you”.
You need to prevent other players from determining whether your actions in the game are the result of a quality hand or of bluffing. The Lady GaGa’s song similar expression used to prevent giving away one’s motives, feelings, or situation. Like in that song when she pretends to like the guy but she’s actually thinking about girls.
Jeffrey M Girard, Psychologist remarks that many factors can influence a person’s level of facial expressiveness in a given scenario, including their current emotional state, their level of attentiveness to the stimulus, and the social context. However, there may also be general patterns in a person’s typical level of facial expressiveness, which is likely to be influenced by their emotional reactivity, their physical and mental health, and their cultural background.
Often a non-poker player will say: ‘I could never play poker, I don’t have a poker face.’ However, in most low-stakes games this is not a very important aspect of the game. Most players are usually too busy thinking about their own hand to scrutinise your reactions in any great detail. As long as you don’t completely give you hand away when you hit the nuts, by either shouting ‘Yes!’ or breaking into a broad smile, you should be okay.
It actually doesn’t take much practice to develop a natural-looking demeanour at the table, regardless of whether you have just made the crown jewels or seen all your dreams go up in smoke. This demeanour may be highly animated or completely motionless (or anything in-between), just so long as it doesn’t give away the strength of your hand.
If you play online you don’t need to keep a poker face at all. When you hit a big hand you can jump up and down, call over your wife and kids to admire your brilliant play, whatever you like. Your opponents won’t be any the wiser. In cyberspace, everyone has the perfect poker face!
But Poker Face is not enough to conceal a winning hand
In an article Hayley Dixon in Independent UK magazine explained that a poker face may not be enough to conceal a winning hand, according to new research which suggests gamblers may need a poker arm to emerge victorious.
Those who are confident that they could have a winning hand place their bets with a smoother arm that those who are trying to blag using poor cards, and observers can guess in just two seconds.
“Even though professional players may be able to regulate their facial expressions, their arm movements could betray the quality of their poker hand,” the researchers wrote in the journal Psychological Science.
Their intentions could be seen from their arm movements when placing bets, the team from Tufts University in the US, found during three separate studies. During the research men and women viewed 20 two-second-long video clips of professional poker players at the 2009 World Series of Poker and rated the hand they were holding based on views of the face or the arms.
Judgements by the non-expert volunteers based on players’ faces were poorer than random guesses, suggesting that players were able to both conceal the quality of their hands and to create deceptive expressions.
The judgements of the volunteers were much more accurate based upon the players’ arm movements.
The research supports previous studies, and one theory is that the overall movement of the arms and hands may reflect confidence in those holding good cards. For those trying to hide their poor hand the stress could have an impact on their movement.
In a third study, the volunteers rated the players’ confidence and smoothness of arm movements and it was found that smooth movements were judged to show confidence.
As the study was released, Phil Ivey, who has been dubbed the Tiger Woods of poker, has revealed that he used another technique of “reading” the cards to get ahead when he won £7.8million in Britain’s oldest casino.
Mayfair club Crockfords has refused to pay him his winnings on the grounds that he “operated a scam”, and he sued them for the money. Mr Ivey, a professional American poker player who vehemently denies cheating, reportedly claimed in court papers that he legitimately used the technique of “edge sorting” to identify the cards during a game of punto bance, a type of baccarat based purely on luck.
In his submission, Mr Ivey sais he was able to exploit tiny flaws in the design of the cards – asymmetrical pattern differences on the rear that are the result of mistakes made during the manufacturing process.
According to him the trick was well known in the industry at the time, and the casino was able to check the deck beforehand.
Just enjoy now as these guys take poker face to another level.
source
Featured image
