One of the easiest ways to improve your winrate in poker is to make your opponents think that you are a so called fish or at least not a very good player. When they think that about you they will play their hands in much more predicable way and make many more errors against you and when you take advantage of those leaks your poker bankroll will get a nice boost.
So how do you convince your opponents that you are fish? Well below I will list some ways that might help you to create the fishy image or make your opponents think that you are on a tilt.
1) When you sit down to a table don’t wait for the big blind.
Instead what you should do is straight after you sit down post the big blind in whatever position you are in. So for an example if you sit down in to a 10 person table so that you would have to wait two hands for the big blind to reach you simply post the big blind now. This will lead to observant opponents thinking that you are action junkie or a tilting player who needs to get action right now and wants to play big pots.
2) Make your buy in look like it is your whole poker account balance
For an example if you sit down to a $1/$2 no limit texas holdem table in which the mimimum buyin is $40 and maximum buyin is $200 you could buy in for $143.76. Many of the pros think that the people who buy in for that type of amount are playing with their whole account balance and thus don’t have bankroll management (meaning that they are not very good in poker) or are taking a shot to a bigger than their usual poker game on tilt.
3) Take time in spots that you usually wouldn’t.
This absolutely doesn’t mean that you should slowroll (= taking time with the nuts before calling all in) your opponents, but for an example take time in a spot where check is obvious. This obviously works better if your opponents will see your hand, so ideally you do the check on river in last position and make sure that your opponents see the hand you checked with.
4) Bet weird amount
You shouldn’t do over do this advice because it will cost you lot of money, but throw in a weird bet from time to time. For an example on turn against 4 players bet $9 to a $40 pot. No pro in their right mind would ever do something like this and thus they will think that if you do it you cant be a very good player.
5) Use letter + number combination username
This isn’t to be taken dead seriously, but there appears to be some merit to it. For an example if you decided to use the screen name Joe1984 or NascarDad99 you might very well convince some of your opponents that you are poker player that plays poker just for fun.
6) Play only one online poker table at the same time
As most of the online poker pros are playing 4 or more tables at the same time they have a tendency to think that the people who are playing only 1 table at the same time can’t be serious poker players.
7) Ask a question about the poker site you are playing on at the table
This is one that you shouldn’t overdo because it is likely to bite you back and just make your opponents suspicious. But you could for an example ask in the table “So does anyone know where I can find the tournaments?” or say “I’m new to online poker can I somehow see my bonus progress?”
Tilt in the chat box after a bad beat
Obviously you shouldn’t do this if you are the type of player that actually goes on tilt after bad beats. But if you can stay calm you could try to get a “tilting poker player” image by writing couple lines such as “FFF how can this happen all day” or “you damn idiot fool joke”. People tend to notice what you say after a brutal bad beat and think that you went on tilt, meaning that if you hit a great hand after convincing the people that you are on tilt you are likely to get more action and value than you would have gotten otherwise.
