Don’t Underestimate The Importance of Table Image
It doesn’t matter if you’re playing in a physical casino or at one of the many online casinos, your table image is crucial. In a physical casino, every thing from the way you’re dressed to the way you sit in your chair can portray a certain table image. But, when playing at an online casino, your table image is projected by things such as the way you bet, how quickly you bet and how many hands you play.
There are four main table images, loose passive, tight passive, loose aggressive and tight aggressive. The trick to taking full advantage of table images is to know both yours and your opponents. But, it’s also vital to make sure that you don’t always portray the same image all the time. Playing in the same style game after game tells the other players what to expect next.
Basically, a loose passive player is one that relies heavily on luck to win a hand. They’ll usually always place careless bets and will generally call no matter what type of hand they’re holding. They often don’t concentrate, leave the table early and appear to not care if they win or lose.
Tight passive players are just the opposite of a loose player. These types of players will rarely place a bet unless they’re pretty sure they’re holding a winning hand. During a strong betting round, a tight passive player will often quickly fold their hand.
However, if a tight passive player suddenly throws in a big bet, you’d better pay close attention. When a player has been folding a lot of hands, or making small bets and then stays in the game and places large bets, you can be almost certain they think they’ve got a winning hand.
A loose aggressive player can bring a lot of action to the game, but can also create a lot of chaos. These types of players will raise and keep raising no matter what kind of cards their holding and almost never just call a bet. This type of table style can result in some huge winnings, but it will usually result in many more huge losses.
Many of the most famous poker players have a loose aggressive table image. Often, these “high rollers” will throw their whole stack of chips in the pot and just be holding a small pair. The really good, experienced loose aggressive players will combine a passive style with the aggressiveness which makes it very hard to read their hand.
A player that generally only plays what they think is a winning hand and only bluffs occasionally, is a tight aggressive player. These players are the most successful, they possess a lot of patience, place decisive bets and do very careful hand selections. They are some of the best players in the game.
One of the hardest table images to break free of is tilt. This image usually occurs after someone has just lost a big hand. Desperate to get back into the game, a player in tilt will completely change their strategy and call almost everything. This can result in disaster at the poker table because the players state of panic is very noticeable to all the other players.