How you play the game can often depend on where you are, with tougher styles
appropriate for more competitive environments
One of the playing strategies is to close the doors, so to speak, and become
stone - not speaking, looking around, and working to hide any tells, making it
hard for your opponents to get a read from you. Players often start
playing with a closed style, and then try a more open style of playing, only
to come back to a closed style as they reach higher level cometitions.
Another strategy is to be more open and talkative, chatting with the other
players while the game is played. This can work to not only distract the
players from the game and breaking their concentration, but it also serves
to open up more closed players and making them leak out clues and tells to
their strengths and weaknesses.
More confident players can work to be abrasive to break their opponent's
game and waver their concentration. This works well within close circles of
friends, where you don't risk actually offending anyone - try stupid jokes,
playful jabs, mindless nattering, interrupting others when they talk, and
bad celebrity impersonations.
A successful strategy, if you can be consistant, is to react exactly the
same each time, or even completely differently each time - in both cases,
you disrupt your opponents' ability to get an accurate read on what you are
thinking and doing. This can mean, for example, always only calling the
first round of betting, no matter what the strength of your hand, or if you
take the opposite track, taking a very strong hand and betting high one
time, lower another time, and simply calling a third. World
championship-calibre players are found employing one of these two strategies
consistantly throughout a series with great results.
