This series of articles will help you identify two very important key areas in Texas Holdem poker. Firstly, how to spot a fish and secondly, realising if you yourself fall into this category. I am going to concentrate on visual and audible information given to us by observing and listening to our opponents in this article. The second part will concentrate on how to spot a fish based on their quality of play. There is simply too much information on this subject for it to be fitted into a single article.

You may or may not see the same faces whenever or wherever you play poker. Obviously on the internet, there are large volumes of players and many will be unknown to you. It is vitally important to be able to classify your opponents very quickly wherever you happen to play. Nearly all of what I will be talking about here will not apply to internet poker sites simply because you cannot see your opponents.

Whenever you sit down in any poker game be it private or casino, you will or at least should be watching your opponents. Weak inexperienced players tend to stand out. You do not need an advanced qualification in psychology to be able to spot a new player. Any player who looks in awe, wonder or perhaps excitement at a poker table as they approach it may be playing poker for the first time. They could be playing live poker for the first time in this era of internet poker or they could simply be playing in a casino for the first time. They might even be in awe of a certain location (i.e Vegas) and be feeling very nervous or excited.

However, this look can be misleading and is certainly not proof of low skill level. This is simply because many internet players have good technical skills at certain forms of poker that may be superior to many of their live opponents. Therefore you will have to accumulate more data either based on the quality of their play or other factors that will be discussed shortly.

Another sign of lack of experience in either live poker or poker in general is poor chip handling. Fumbling and dropping chips is a sure sign that a player is not used to handling them. Although once again you have to be careful with this because skilled internet players would not have this ability if they didn’t have much live game experience.

Anyone who is ignorant of the rules of the game is likely to be a “fish” although beware of the actor who is trying to throw a smoke screen by pretending that they don’t know. Anyone who is unaware of poker etiquette is likely to be playing poker for the first time or at least is inexperienced. Notice here that I said “unaware”, this is because there are many players out there who simply do not care about poker etiquette. If you do not know poker rules and procedures and do not know what I am talking about when I talk about etiquette, better look out for those gills because I am referring to you. Look out for part three coming soon.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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