If you usually play poker online, moving to the live arena can be a little daunting. Online you may use a plethora of software that will quickly highlight which players at your table are good, bad or average but unfortunately no such software exists for the “real” world.

However, the best tool you can use at the live poker tables is your eyes and observational powers. Whilst the very best players in the world can disguise their actions so that you can gather no information about them or the strength of their hand, the majority of players in your standard casino or card room cannot or at least fail to do it all the time.

Many of the old school pros say to try and look into an opponent’s eyes as you can see if their pupils dilate when they see the flop or their hand, a reflex action that is impossible to control that indicates they are very happy with their hand. Some players combat this by wearing sunglasses or a baseball cap pulled down low but one part of their body they cannot stop everyone at the table seeing is their hands.

You should pay close attention to a player’s hands as they can often give away a lot of information into not only how strong or weak your opponents hand is, but also how experienced a player they actually are. Someone who is quite well versed in live poker will often sit and riffle their chips during a hand. This is one of the basic poker chip tricks but one that shows the player has sat at a real poker table on quite a few occasions. Most rank amateurs and predominately online poker players will often have trouble looking at their hand and handling the physical chips after years of clicking a mouse to confirm their actions.

Always be aware of someone who has shaking hands when they put their chips into the pot, especially if they are raising. Many people believe, incorrectly, that a player with shaking hands is almost always bluffing and their hands are unsteady because they are nervous. This for the most part is untrue as the shaking of the hands is usually an involuntary reaction to the person having a lot of adrenalin flowing through them, more often than not caused by the excitement of having a very strong hand and they are anticipating winning a large pot.

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