How to Keep a Poker Face

When people hear the term “Poker Face” one of two things immediately come to mind: They either conjure up an image of a stone-faced poker player who hasn’t cracked a smile in 20 years, or they think of the pop hit by Lady Gaga -which keeps arriving in my e-mail courtesy of my subscription to Google Alerts under the term “Poker”!!!

But a poker face is not just an expressionless mask; a poker face refers to acting the same way all the time, whether it’s the stoic persona we all equate the term, or being totally erratic with your movements and expressions.

Players like Gus Hansen, Phil Laak, or Daniel Negreanu would rate really low on the stone-faced charts, but still these players are unreadable because they are always behaving in the same manner: Talking out loud, making strange movements, or in the case of Laak just acting absurd. Their ability to be erratic makes them unreadable, their opposition has no idea what the gestures or talk means.

On the flip side you have players like John Juanda, Dan Harrington, and Phil Ivey. These players are the epitome of stone-faced; you have a better chance of getting a reaction from the statue of David than from one of these three players.

The silent, stone-faced, approach tends to cause your opponents to guess a lot, where the talkative, movement, route tends to manipulate your opponents into what you want them to do: However, the talkative approach is a lot harder to implement.

The tack you should take completely depends upon your personality, but if you are unsure you should probably stick to the silent, statue, poker face for the simple reason that it’s easier to pull off. If you are not used to chit-chatting, acting zany, and making big gestures it’s going to be pretty easy for people to see through your act. Where pretty much anyone has the ability to “clam-up” whenever they want to. So for the sake of simplicity I would recommend you implement the classic poker face.

However, if you know from experience that you’re an affable person that seems to put people at ease, or have the type of personality that causes people to open up to you, you can probably take the crazy, talkative, route. But, you need to be certain that your table talk and wild gestures aren’t giving away more information that they are taking in!

The best way to determine the effectiveness of your poker face is by how often your opponents guess correctly in tough spots, and how long they debate their decision. If your opponents are picking off your bluffs left and right, with little thought before they act, chances are your poker face needs some serious work! On the other hand, if your opponents have to do a lot of deliberating, and are only moderately successful in reading you than whatever you are doing is working just fine.