One of the most important aspects in poker tournaments is conning your opponents by making them believe your poker hand is better, when in reality it is most likely your hand is much worse than theirs. This is popularly known as “Poker face”, a straight-face to trick your competition into supposing an idea that might be false.

If you have a good hand it is most likely going to affect your nerves, could possibly make your hands shaky, and your pulse rise. These are pretty obvious signs that your poker buddies may pick up on very quickly, especially if they know you well. Keep in mind not to peer over at the pot if you have some good poker cards in your hands. This is an obvious gesture for your competitors that you are, in your head, counting the poker chips.

In the situation where you have a horrible poker hand, try not to keep yourself from glancing at your poker buddies, don’t lower your head, and don’t act reluctant about your bet. When you can prove to yourself that your set of cards is equal, or superior than your competition; you will possibly convince them of this as well. Remember to make this seem as normal as possible. Your gestures and actions may be saying one point, while what you are saying are giving them a whole different idea.

Another significant aspect of Texas Hold Em is to be able to read your opponents “poker tells”. A “tell” is a gesture or habit that may give away information about their hand. One critical point to remember is when your opponent gives the appearance that he has a great Texas Hold Em hand; he, most likely, has a very weak hand. From a different angle, if he behaves as though he has a weak hand, he in all probability has an excellent Texas Hold Em hand.

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According to the 2006 World Series of Poker winner, Jamie Gold, he wants to be celebrated as the finest bluffer in the world. But if his last tournament is any clue, his wish may not be granted any time soon.

The setting is the 2007 Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic held at the Vegas Bellagio in 2007. Featuring $50 - $100 blinds and a $15,000 buy-in, Darrell Dicken is just barely holding on. The seat 4 player has just raised his bet to $300, a tiny increase with only one player biting the line. “I put him as being weak,” Jamie said, “I was thinking about raising, but instead I just called with a 10-3 of hearts to see what would happen.”

Jamie thought that Brad Booth would make some kind of move, which he did. He re-raised to $1600 from the big blind. Gold was thinking that Booth had a reasonable hand, but he was in a good position to make a move considering the amount of dead money in the pot. Dicken ended up folding, and the unknown in Seat 4 called Booth’s raise.

At this point there was more than $4000 in the pot, so Jamie raised the wager by $4000. His thought was, only if someone else had aces or kings there would be no chance they would make that call. Jamie’s plan was to make a sizeable move on the flop, as long as no ace came up. The second part of his plan was to get Booth to fold, which he did. Booth folded with pocket queens.

On the flop there was an ace of ace-6-5, two clubs. The player in seat 4 checked and Jamie bet $2000. Jamie’s primary thought was to make him think that he had clubs. Seat 4 laid down a $10,000 chip, but didn’t say anything thus converting his raise into a call. Jamie’s thought was that seat 4 in all likelihood had an ace, but you have to protect it in case he hits his set on the upcoming card.

A 2 of hearts showed up on the turn, and Jamie folded to what he thought was a top pair kicker. Seat 4 displayed a king-jack off suit. Seat 4 beat Gold by bluffing with a superior hand, he made a terrific play and took the bluff to the end of the poker tournament.

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If I told you every critical decision in poker was actually an easy decision would you believe me? Probably not, but if you believe in your intuition and have inner balance and control then you can hear and listen to your gut feeling and follow through with your gut feeling. Your gut feeling or intuition can be your best friend if you have confidence in it, trust it and listen to it. Your intuition is that first feeling you get, the majority of people never believe or trust in there 6th sense and dismiss the feeling as just a thought and then think more and end up with no real confident answer or decision.

Everyone knows that one guy that seems to just seems to float through life and always gets so lucky, well that guy probably listens to his 6th sense. He’s probably laid back, never really worried or never panics just always seems so sure.

Your 6th sense isn’t the solution to all your problems and your gut feeling isn’t always right, just because your gut feeling isn’t always right it’s not correct to stop listening to it, you need to understand that your gut feeling is the best tool that will help your more times then not, so listen to it unconditionally.

You have most likely heard the miracle stories about cows sensing stuff before it happens, or animals acting weird or behaving weird before major events happen. This is because animals rely on gut feeling, they trust and rely on instinct for survival. They don’t have time to thoroughly think things through or contemplate, they feel there gut trust it and react on it.

This is not to say that you shouldn’t think about decisions or problems and should just do what your first intuition is, because evaluation is an important and critical part of the decision making process. Going over all the variables presented to you to come up with a conclusion. So evaluation is important and should be done, but you should be able to feel your first natural instinct and let it play a major role in your decision making process. You should give your gut feeling the biggest overall value on the list of variables that you consider when making a decision.

For the majority of people they will never be able to tap into there intuition or will never be able to know when they hear it or feel it, this is because in order to hear and listen your gut feeling you need to have balance in your mind and body, you need to have emotional control over yourself, you need to be in touch with your feelings. Everyone has instinct and gut feeling so if you don’t know what your gut feeling is it’s probably because your mind is clouded and cannot clearly identify when your gut feeling kicks in and talks to you.

Being able to hear and listen to your gut feeling can become a very powerful tool in your Texas Hold’em playing, you have to listen to your gut though, the first instinct or thought you have is usually always the correct decision. Your mind is a powerful database more powerful then any computer and has a hard drive that stores every hand you play, every bet that people make, every situation that happens. So your gut feeling is usually what the mind feels based on your database of similar Hold’em situations.

So practice listening to your self, identify when your gut tells you something and believe in it and use it in life, use it on the poker tables. Hopefully this will help you improve your Hold’em game and make you a better poker player.

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The tradition of poker tournaments and poker games drawing all manner of high rollers in high society clientele is as old as the game of Texas Hold’em itself. Presidents, Kings, Queens and other world figures have been known to play in all manner of tournaments and competitions, quite often sponsoring them as well. This tendency for historical figures to view gambling and gaming as less vice and more virtue has waned over the years, as the moral majority has pointed out the evils of gambling and playing in games of skill and chance such as poker and the road to destruction that awaits those who succumb to the evils of gaming, drinking and chasing women. But despite this focus on shouting about the evils of gambling, the romantic allure still exists, as movies such as the James Bond series can easily illustrate. In the famous spy series, the hero almost always plays in some form of gambling or poker match, making huge wagers and subsequently either winning or losing spectacularly, as the plot depends.
Many new poker players cite this romanticized version of the high-stakes gambler that is supported in popular culture such as the James Bond movies and other forms of media. This focus on high entertainment brushes over the realities of the game of poker in a big way. The truth about playing poker and competing in all manner of cash games and poker tournaments is that it requires slow, steady and patient abilities and skills at the poker table and, in any James Bond movie that has ever been made, there is very little about the famous British secret agents playing style that one could call subtle. This is because of the unreality of any Hollywood movie that is predicated on big explosions, larger than life characters and more big explosions as well as big risks. After all the card playing and dramatic sequences, the moviegoer can expect to see some additional big explosions.
The unreality involved in the making of these types of movies can easily desensitize the viewer to the realities of these types of card games. In poker, it is quite easy to lose, and lose big. While James Bond may look very attractive in his dinner jacket and debonair appearance, his playing style would get any casual player sent to the poor house in rapid fashion.

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