11-19-2007, 08:30 AM
I've been playing no limit Texas Hold'em tournaments for about two years now, just small ones. (Amounts are in US $s) Online the games have only been in the $1 to $5 range, and live casino games have been $30 buy-in with rebuys for the first hour. So far my tally sheet shows me up a little over $5K. Now PLEASE don't get me wrong here, you still have to have a strong technically correct game, but I've found that I have a small advantage in simply being Aspie. Every good player is going to know the odds cold, but as an Aspie I've found that the NTs I've played against in live games completely misread me because I don't give off the same body language they do. In online games the advantage is obviously not there.
Now I think I know what you will say here, if you're playing poker for money you shouldn't be giving off any body language at all. Not completely true. Even the best players give off small "tells", and most will not only try to suppress them, but will cover them up with over false or misleading tells. The slight advantage for me is that I do not think the same way they do and, when I let them get out, will naturally not give the same cues. Aside from the excitement of playing cards for real money, it's good practice reading people in a semi-controlled environment and in governing my own body language.
Some folks are easy to read. One lady had me beat and I knew it, but after she raised me she looked down and started to fiddle with her fingernails, she wasn't sure she had the high hand. I went all in and just blankly stared at her. She folded her hand giving me the win and the pot. Another (a local policewoman) thought she had my three jacks beat and I knew she didn't. She put out a standard bet and I raised her, not a lot, but enough to make her think about it while I shot a huge mischievous grin at her. She gave me a hard look for about 6 or 7 seconds while I continued to grin. Finally she said that she "just had to know" and called my raise. The key on that hand was that I knew that as an officer she wouldn't respect a non-officer unless she had prior knowledge of that person, and she didn't know me from Adam. Good or professional players are tougher, but there are still clues I can look for, they're just harder to find and sometimes you have to get to know the individual before you can get a handle on them. Either way, they are still going to have a hard time reading me because I'm outside their normal experience.
I'll likely never get to the point that I would get into really high stakes games or even think about "going professional". But it's a good time and excellent practice with people and body language. Besides, I can't tell you how positively orgasmic the experience of taking real money from a police officer is.
Now I think I know what you will say here, if you're playing poker for money you shouldn't be giving off any body language at all. Not completely true. Even the best players give off small "tells", and most will not only try to suppress them, but will cover them up with over false or misleading tells. The slight advantage for me is that I do not think the same way they do and, when I let them get out, will naturally not give the same cues. Aside from the excitement of playing cards for real money, it's good practice reading people in a semi-controlled environment and in governing my own body language.
Some folks are easy to read. One lady had me beat and I knew it, but after she raised me she looked down and started to fiddle with her fingernails, she wasn't sure she had the high hand. I went all in and just blankly stared at her. She folded her hand giving me the win and the pot. Another (a local policewoman) thought she had my three jacks beat and I knew she didn't. She put out a standard bet and I raised her, not a lot, but enough to make her think about it while I shot a huge mischievous grin at her. She gave me a hard look for about 6 or 7 seconds while I continued to grin. Finally she said that she "just had to know" and called my raise. The key on that hand was that I knew that as an officer she wouldn't respect a non-officer unless she had prior knowledge of that person, and she didn't know me from Adam. Good or professional players are tougher, but there are still clues I can look for, they're just harder to find and sometimes you have to get to know the individual before you can get a handle on them. Either way, they are still going to have a hard time reading me because I'm outside their normal experience.
I'll likely never get to the point that I would get into really high stakes games or even think about "going professional". But it's a good time and excellent practice with people and body language. Besides, I can't tell you how positively orgasmic the experience of taking real money from a police officer is.