Tips to Achieving the Ultimate Poker Face
As any seasoned poker player can attest, bluffing is an art. In poker, winning often depends more on a player’s ability to bluff their way through a hand than about the cards themselves. This is where having a stone-cold poker face comes in handy.
Contrary to popular belief, the term “poker face” originated outside the card table. First coined in the 1920s, the term was used by a sports reporter to describe how a specific player seemed unfazed by the action around him—instead, he managed to stay focused on winning.
The term was quickly adopted by poker enthusiasts, and the meaning evolved to refer to a player who can mask their emotions from others in order to bluff their way to a win.
If you’re ready to join the winner’s circle and start raking in the chips, these top tips and tricks will help you master the ultimate poker face.
Identify Your Triggers
In poker, players don’t gloat or cry at the table until after the game is over. Letting on whether you’ve got a winning or losing hand will only guarantee a worse outcome, so controlling your emotions is key.
The first step to honing the ultimate poker face is to identify your own unique emotional triggers. These triggers can cause you to react to a development at the card table, often more dramatically than in other everyday circumstances.
Identifying these triggers in advance can help you mentally prepare for them and also practice a different physical response to use during a game. Mitigating your emotional responses to an exciting or distressing development will make it harder for opponents to use your emotions against you.
Understand Your Tells
Experienced poker players are always on the lookout for other players’ tells—unconscious actions that betray what they think or feel. These are also unique to each individual and can be virtually any physical action, ranging from a nervous twitch to shifting position in one’s seat, scratching one’s nose or face, or even blinking differently than usual.
Understanding your own tells may be difficult as you may not notice them. Asking trusted friends to identify tells can help you work around them and make an effort to ensure they don’t occur in-game. Gaining control over your tells could be the one-way ticket to a successful bluff and win.
Learn to Breathe
A common tell that gives poker players away is changes in their breathing in response to exciting developments in the game. It is natural to breathe faster or more shallowly if you are excited or experiencing additional stress. Learning to control this instinctive reaction is crucial.
When practicing your poker face, teach yourself to take long, slow breaths to keep your body calm and relaxed. This will help you remain composed regardless of the situation and will be a critical part of perfecting your poker face.
Practice!
Mastering your poker face is one part of the equation, but practicing how to play the game is just as important. After all, you can only bluff so much before a better player takes the game!
Set a schedule that allows you at least 15 minutes daily to practice honing your poker skills. Do this in front of a mirror to identify any cracks in your demeanor as the games progress. Practicing in low-risk games is also a great way to gain more experience.
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Set a Baseline
While some players are said to be “made of stone,” this is an unrealistic poker face benchmark for most amateur players. It is far more useful and achievable to work on setting a baseline for your facial expressions and body language.
This baseline should be relaxed, alert, and subdued. When settling into this demeanor, ensure that you act the same regardless of the hand you’re dealt or what is occurring in the game. Additionally, avoid suddenly shifting your posture, betting differently, or changing your tone of voice. Instead, maintain your baseline consistently.
Don’t Let Your Eyes Wander
Thoughtful eye control can make a significant difference in the effectiveness of a poker face and help improve your game. While staring is unnecessary, avoiding eye contact with others can be a sign of deception. Therefore, practice holding a steady and relaxed gaze with other players.
Ensure you don’t dart your eyes around the room or blink excessively when not looking at your opponents. These are classic signs of nervousness. Instead, move your eyes in a sweeping motion if you look around and focus on keeping your blinking regular and natural.
Watch Your Body Language
While a successful poker face is mostly about facial expressions, body language also plays a prominent role here. Your body language can easily give you away if you’re not careful.
When sitting, maintain proper posture without slouching or fidgeting. Slouching is a particularly risky position because most people can’t help but straighten their posture when they become more interested or engaged with the poker table. Also, make sure to control your hands; excessive gesturing or touching of objects around you (particularly a drinking glass) can indicate excitement or nervousness—giving your opponents an insight into your emotions.
Use Props
Props are often frowned upon during poker games as they give players the ability to hide their emotions with less effort. However, they can be instrumental when you’re not yet confident in concealing your reactions during a game.
Should you opt to use props, limit them to sunglasses and a hat or hoodie. The glasses can help mask your eye movements, while the hat or hoodie can obscure your facial expressions and make it harder to see what you are thinking. However, both should be used sparingly and only when absolutely necessary.
Be Mindful
Another critical part of ensuring a successful poker face is mindfulness. This entails being focused on the game that you are playing without giving thought or attention to anything else around you. Likewise, try to avoid worrying about things that happened before the game started or will be happening after.
Proper mindfulness focuses on your opponents and pushes the outcomes of past hands or future outcomes from your mind. This leaves you free to center your attention on the current hand.
Relax!
The final tip to a successful poker face is simply to relax. While there may be instances where you are playing for high stakes, poker is a game of skill meant to be enjoyed for the thrill of playing.
Approaching poker this way will allow you to be calmer and more comfortable and will help prevent nervous ticks, elevated heart rates, increased breathing, and worrying about hiding your emotions. In short, you’ll be able to maintain the perfect poker face.