Stop Looking at Your Cards Only

One thing I’ve been trying to improve in poker is paying more attention to the table instead of focusing only on my own cards.

Your cards are important, but your opponents’ actions can tell you a lot. Who is betting quickly? Who suddenly becomes aggressive? Who usually checks and then raises?

Sometimes the best information at the table isn’t in your hand — it’s in the way your opponents play theirs.

What do you pay the most attention to when you’re playing?

Paying attention to when your opponent shows their cards, if they do, that’s a gold mine of information you just got.

I focus on betting patterns and reactions to specific situations. The change in sizing, plus the shift from passive to very aggressive play, is often enough to give me an idea of what someone might have. Paying attention to bluff frequencies, the number of times someone defends and folds under pressure tell me a lot too. You can get lots of information from people by not thinking about your own hand and paying attention to theirs. ♠️

Joujou113 said:

One thing I’ve been trying to improve in poker is paying more attention to the table instead of focusing only on my own cards.

Your cards are important, but your opponents’ actions can tell you a lot. Who is betting quickly? Who suddenly becomes aggressive? Who usually checks and then raises?

Sometimes the best information at the table isn’t in your hand — it’s in the way your opponents play theirs.

What do you pay the most attention to when you’re playing?

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You're at a great point of your poker evolution because you're right. Watching the players, seeing what they do, things like that are really important, but also can really upgrade your game to a new level. The only thing I could honestly say is you don't want to just go out there and say if they do this, it's always that. Because when you run into really good players, they're the ones that are deceptive, and you'll never figure out what they're doing. But for 99% of the players out there, what you're on right now is going to really upgrade your game. Because I can't remember who it is who said it, but he says, When I play poker, I play with two paper napkins. I don't care what the cards are. I'm playing the players. And that's a really good way of looking at it because there are times where you can literally play any two cards against a certain type of player if you're in the right spot. It's also not about winning more chips. It's also saving more chips for yourself too. Many people forget that sometimes the biggest win is folding and saving your chips. But again, it goes back to reading the table and everything else. I wish you good luck. You're in a great spot and a great journey.

In my notes, since I play basically the same tournaments every day, I have notes on 90% of the players.

Position.

Its kind of important to also pay attention to the board or relative hand strength, as its sometimes called.
is top pair top kicker on , but its not exactly a strong hand because of all the other hands, that beat it and in many cases has it drawing dead. So usually the best play will be to check/fold.