By now(hopefully) you’ve come to realize, that when you see an opponent with cards is happy, you should probably get out of the hand. Or at the very least, proceed with extreme caution, because they’re surely on the make. Now that you’ll have a little easier time spotting this when it happens, I want to distinguish the difference between happiness and anger, in relation to the mouth.
Now, anger is not to be confused with discontent. When a player is discontent at the poker table, its usually accompanied by the feeling of being beat. (I’ve described this as ‘dread’) and its something every player will experience at some point. Whether the reason is because of a bad run of cards, multiple losing sessions, or problems in your personal life; that sneak out from the back of your mind when you aren’t in a hand. It instills the feeling that you have no luck, or just aren’t meant to come out on top.
Anger, is usually accompanied with the feeling of what I categorize as ‘subtle-rage’. They aren’t flipping out, causing a scene, but he’s decided at some point in, or before the hand that they’re going to take somebody’s money.
These players are often mistaken for being or getting ‘aggressive’ and since to remain aggressive, you have to open your hand range and its usually presumed, that ½ or most of the time, that they are getting out of line.
But anger doesn’t just magically show up. It festers, and they’ve been waiting for a premium(to their range) hand to release it. This can cause you to be baited into calling large raises with marginal hands, just because of your position in relation to them, or misread on their mood. Or it can cause you to be intimidated out of the hand.(Which you should never allow to happen.) When whats really going on is, the opponent is just irritated by another player’s(or your) play whether collectively, or just in one hand. Once that’s seeded in their mind; its only a matter of time before they’re going to feel the need to intervene, and try to teach somebody a lesson. It’s important to be able to HONESTLY evaluate your hand here.
Pre-flop is the only part of poker where I believe you need to play the cards, before you play the player. For example, theres no reason to call 67 suited to a 5bet+, preflop at a cash game. I don’t care if you ARE on the button. You are essentially going into the hand with 67 vs. at LEAST one face card, or a pocket pair. Let it go, and wait for a better SITUATION. Its not that 67 suited is a horrible hand, its just more likely to be beat when facing a raise like that **by somebody who is angry**. I’m not telling you to allow yourself to be pushed around. Although an exemption to this would be in a tournament, there are a lot of other factors to consider, and you may or may not want to see a flop. But that’s only because of the TIME constraints that you have to deal with in a tournament.(rising blinds)
Now that you know why you need this information, I’m going to tell you how to find it. I’ve already explained how to find ‘happy’ in the mouth area. You would think anger would be a lot easier to see, but that’s not the case. Due to sunglasses, and hats, a good portion of the giveaways from the nose up are usually hidden or obscured.(for instance, *from the nose up*, a player with a hat and sunglasses is more prone to look confused, or as if he’s analyzing the hand when hes actually fuming. This is because the band of the hat restricts some of the movements in the forehead, and the nose pads on the sunglasses is constantly inducing a slight downward pull due to the weight of the glasses, thus restricting motion between, and at the edges of the eyebrows.) So where do you look? The same place you look to find ‘happy’. The mouth. [Read more…] about Poker Anger
