Manipulating Your Poker Opponents

There are several key skills required to be able to manipulate opponents into playing poorly aswell as a few methods for actually making them play badly.

The most important skills to possess in order to successfully manipulate your opponents is having the ability to read your opponents poker hands and making very few mistakes yourself. By making as few mistakes as possible, you are presenting as few opportunities for your opponents to manipulate you, the more mistakes you make the more your opponents can use this to their advantage, especially if you make the same mistake repeatedly. Hand reading is a skill that is slowly developed, the more you play the better you become at reading your opponents; once you've mastered this skill, you will be better equipped to spot mistakes in your opponents play, allowing you to manipulate them more easily.

Controlling the pot size is an often underestimated method for manipulating your opponents, poker is a game of maths and percentages, by ensuring your opponents pay bad value odds to chase their draws and keeping the pots small when you suspect you are behind, you will win bigger pots than your opponents and lose smaller ones too.

It's possible to control opponents by influencing their play through your actions and words; bullying a tight and weak opponent can be very successful by continuously raising and reraising them, your cards hold less meaning because it's your ability to make the tight and weak players fold that wins you the pot, not your hands showndown value. Bullying loose players can create plenty of action as they are more prone to calling you, if you can get this type of opponent to lower their standards even further it's possible to win some big pots with slightly weaker hands than you'd normally play, caution is advised though.

A highly successful method for manipulating opponents is simply to talk to them; sometimes it's as simple as distracting their attention away from the game, other players react badly to confontation and are easy to put on tilt, even carefully worded flirting and being friendly can be part of a successful manipulation strategy.