Know Your Enemy
In any strategic situation, the most important weapon you can wield is information. Often in showdown situations that do not end in brute force, it is the online poker player with the most information, as well as how he applies that information, that will ultimately succeed. There are few situations where this kind of dynamic could be more true than in the world of poker online, where many hands, less than the cards you hold, are determined by a battle of willswho knows what, and how they can force the other player to act in accordance with their wishes.
The mainline to information in a hand is largely based upon past action. Over the course of a session at a table with players, each hand develops a series of signals and responses that, when ordered and applied, add up to a portrait of a way a player can be expected to behave. Though many of the best players are capable of shifting their image to keep this kind of information reliable, the measuring of that shift is also data that can be acquired and applied.
More than simply ‘getting reads,’ then, poker is about learning your opponents patterns. Watching how they act, when, under what conditions, and against whom are all bits of data that continue to develop your edge on a hand to hand basis at the casino.
