I occasionally receive e-mails from poker players who want to pick my brain on certain aspects of the game, or even on specific hands they played. I do enjoy providing my two cents, but never do I claim it as the absolute truth for there is no such thing in poker. I provide an opinion only, and hope that my opinion will benefit my readers.

Brandon, from Austin Texas, sent me an e-mail the other day and asked for suggestions in dealing with a problem he’s having at the tables:

“Hello Ace,

I visit mypokercorner.com regularly and I love all the articles you write and I’m always looking forward to the next one. I find your advice to be helpful and my poker game has improved because of your articles. I’m having this little problem however, and I hope you can give me some pointers on what I am doing wrong or what I need to do to remedy my situation.

It seems that no matter where I play lately, I tend to get walked over all the time. I’m looking to earn respect at the table. When I raise, I want opponents to fear me! But it doesn’t seem to be working because although I work on establishing a tight table image by being conservative, by folding a lot of hands, by calling when it’s not to expensive to do so, the moment I raise it seems like people don’t believe me. They either call or reraise and that’s very frustrating for someone who’s trying to bluff on rare occasions. Am I doing something wrong here?

Thanks a lot for your help man!”

Alright Brandon, you didn’t give me a lot of detail to work with so I’ll have to speculate. But first, I’d like to thank you for your kind comments regarding mypokercorner.com and I’m glad to hear the advice has helped. After all, that is why I created this website to begin with. Also, I will be writting more often since my summer vacation nears its end.

OK, getting respect at the table is important. There is no question about it. Being respected means that when you raise, you are taken seriously. It means opponents will consider folding their hands. I think you started on the right path: Establishing a conservative image. Now, that doesn’t mean that you can’t have respect if your aggressive, on the contrary, but it can be easier to pull off with the conservative image until you get a lot more experience.

In your case, it sounds to me like your problem could be one of the following:

You don’t raise by a significant amount

This means that although you do raise an announce that you have a strong hand, you’re not putting enough chips in to make people back off. A significant raise is required and it should be at least 3 times the current bet, if not more. If you raise by twice the amount, that’s just going to make people call and all of a sudden, everyone’s pot odds justify a call. What’s worse is that the more callers your have, the better pot odds remaining players get because there’s a lot more to win. If you don’t raise by a significant amount, you’re actually making the situation worse for yourself.

You’re too conservative

Aggressive players like to put pressure on conservative players because they tend to fold more often than anyone else. If you come in with a raise, and someone with a big stack reraises you, don’t assume they have you beat. They can afford to loose some chips and they figure you’re an easy target. Especially if you’ve demonstrated that you fold under pressure easily in previous hands. Maybe you need to be a little more aggressive more often, but not excessively. You can still retain a fairly tight player image if you time your aggressively correctly. There’s a difference between having a tight image and just being a poker pussy! Seriously, act with confidence and don’t let people push you around.

You got caught bluffing

You can have a tight image but if the last few hands you raised and got called and revealed your cards on a bluff, you may not have the image you think you have. People remember those who get caught in the cookie jar, and they don’t believe them as easily when they raise. For a while at least. Reworking the image can bring you back credibility.

You are the short stack

Doesn’t really matter if you’re tight or not, especially in texas holdem tournaments and sit and goes. People will want you out and big stacks will call you or put you all in pre-flop even when they have practically nothing. Maybe you’ve been the victim of being over conservative and your stack size got insignificant when compared to the value of the blinds.

You fail to reinforce your image regularly

Keep advertising your image. Even when you fold, you can still show a card proving that you had something the middle pair, or something. If there is a flush potential on the board for example, and you raise with top pair, and someone else reraises, well folding may be the right move but make sure you let everyone else know that you folded top pair in this case. This reinforces the message that when you raise, it’s because you have something to back it up. It will be easier for your to later exploit this image and make a big bluff.

Try a different limit

Maybe you are playing too low limits where a lot of players don’t care that much since there’s little to loose. This makes them call hands they wouldn’t, or shouldn’t, normally call. Then again, maybe you’re playing to high limits and the players are just too strong for you. And maybe you’re fine at the limits you play now, but don’t dismiss the possibility of trying different limits to see if this affects how people react to your play style.

You need to read players better

Sometimes, opponents have you beat. That’s just the reality. You can have top pair or three of a kind, maybe someone has a full house. Sometimes people will reraise you no matter what your image is, no matter what cards you hold, for the simple fact that they believe they have the best hand. A table image can only be exploited against someone who doesn’t feel totally confident about the strength of their own hand. Work on picking up cues that indicate that someone has a strong hand.

I hope you’ll find this helpful Brandon. I don’t have all the answers unfortunately, but I’m confident that you’ll figure out what you need to work on once you’ve explored the points mentioned above. I wish you the best of luck at the poker tables!

If anyone wants to ask me a question, feel free to contact me. I would be happy to respond to your queries.

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