Lot of people who love to play online poker also love to watch the high stakes online poker games. Games like $500/$1,000 pot limit Omaha at Full Tilt Poker always gather thousands of spectators who are glued to their computer screen in awe when hundreds of thousands of dollars change owner. Most of these people are watching these games simply because it is fun to watch someone to play online poker for that type of sickening amounts of money. However, some people have also realized that they can also learn something by watching these games and pick up things that might help them in their own (most likely much smaller) poker games.
It might be hard to figure out what are the important things that you should look for when watching these games and what things you should ignore, for that reason we have created a list of 10 things you should look for when watching these high stakes online poker games in action. From below the 10 things you can also find 5 “rules” for adding the things that you might have picked up for your own game.
10 Things to look for when you watch internet highs stakes poker and try to improve your own game by doing it:
1) How the players play from button. What type of hands they are opening with, how they play against raises etc.
2) How the players play from blinds. Do they fold a lot, what type of hands they re-raise with what type of hands they call with and so on.
3) What type of hands they open raise from early position. Do those include suited connectors, what broadway (both cards above 10) hands those include etc.
4) In which situations they slow play their hands. Pay especially attention to the board texture (dangerous / one that the opponent(s) didn’t like hit).
5) How they take advantage of tilting player. Tighten up against them / loosen up against them and so on.
6) How they take advantage of the weak / fish players. Do they play lot more hands against fishes, what type of hands they play against the weak players etc.
7) How they change their play depending on if they are playing against loose / tight player. Hand selection, playing hands in certain spots and so on..
How they change their play depending on if they are playing against aggressive / passive player.
9) How they react after a bad beat. Good players don’t tilt after bad beat, they might pretend that they are on tilt, but in reality they are doing that in order to gain advantage when their opponent thinks they are on tilt.
10) How they carry themselves in the table. Good poker players are not supposed to insult their opponents etc.
5 Rules for adding the things that you picked up for your own game:
1) Remember that it makes big difference what the poker game was and how many players it had.
2) Always play the player.
3) Avoid overly tricky plays against bad players.
4) Obviously only pick up things from the winning players.
5) Keep in mind that even the good players play hands in sub-optimal way sometimes and have leaks in their game.
