I'm into rhythm. Sometimes in the heat of a hand if you say re-raise right after they say raise, they get caugh up in the adrenaline of the moment and let that influence their decision. Likewise, thinking for a really long time before a big river bet and making them possibly sweat can also give them time to calm down, get anxious or sometimes mentally prepare themselves for a call regardless of bet size.

I think about this as a major unconscious factor for most peoples decision making process. But beyond a few moment moves where I quickly will verbally raise against certain types of "alpha-type" players, I wish I had more theories on how to use anticipation or surprise to influence my opponents decision making process.

I imagine the advice most experienced players will give won't be to randomize the length of your decisions. You are going to level yourself into making bad decisions at the table if you're focused on how long it's taking you to make choices. I've seen some posts before when players have reccomended standardizing the length of your decisions so as to prevent identifying strength/weekness. Repeating behaviors and betting movements during every hand so that they feel natural and can be repeated helps. Usually the emotion associated with hands goes away over time and it will become easier to maintain specific behaviors. Usually players feel rushed to make a decision and act faster when they can take a reasonable amount of time to act whenever it gets to them.



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Maybe I was unclear. I am not worried about standardizing my behavior in an effort to be less readable, I am talking about an attempt to induce behavior.

Obviously, this is player dependent but in terms of a general rule of thumb, I find that if a player raises me with a decent hand and I snap raise him confrontationaly, a lot of guys will get caught up in the moment and the testosterone and snap raise me right back or be far more likely to call then if I sat there for a while and then put my chips in with my standard routine.

There is a lot of adrenaline and testosterone involved in you opponents decision making to take into consideration.

I was wondering if anyone else had any thoughts on this line of thinking. Will taking an unusually long period of time before making a huge over bet be generally read as weaker or stronger than if it was a more standard timing?

I hear what you're saying man. I don't think my response was clear enough as to why I think that standardizing you decisions would help with this situation. People are going to read into to the length of time it takes you to make your choices regardless of how long they take. You could click back or tank forever and people are going to read into it however they are going to read into it. I do not think that is wise to spend time at the table thinking about how long to take making your decisions to induce behavior. That is going to get in the way of thinking about a million other things that are more important to be considering while you're playing. Lets say you immediately re-raise on the flop and get jammed on, how are you going to know if you induced this behavior, or if they have it? Have you been spending time thinking about your opponents range and physical tells or have you been thinking about how quickly you should go about acting during the hand?

If you feel like people are jamming on you because they feel like you are giving off bluffy vibes with your speed of play then I think you know slowing down might be preferable. If you want someone to say you should be snap re-raising with the nuts to get jammed on because people think you're FOS then I think you're barking up the wrong tree. You'd probably be better served to take about the same amount of time for most decisions.

So if I'm reading correctly you want to induce spaz in alpha male types? The ones that have their pride and ego on the table and play with emotion?

Yeah that's pretty basic in my experience. If I take some, not too much, time to make a bet in a respectful manner they give it more respect and are more inclined to fold.

Now the opposite is much, much more fun. Play like you're using play money and bet like a toddler. That means clumsy and impulsive and make it look like you're just toying with them, they'll hate it. Make sure you seem like you don't even care they are in the hand and it doesn't matter what they do. They will start calling just because they feel their ego hurt. Also make sure to show a bluff if you have one so they look stupid to the whole table. It's also preferable to look like you don't even pose a threat to a fly so they really can't stand losing to you. Oh and the best one is when you want to put them all in and they have like $200 in front of them you get 10 $100 chips and throw them in so they feel belittled. In general all these things involve playing pretty fast and making snap decisions so they feel like they have to match your pace, which of course they can't. I have made some decent money playing against older guys that couldn't stand the idea of possibly getting bluffed by me.

Now note that you need to be pretty good at your game to do this because if you take too much time at any point they are going to start to feel more comfortable and in control. If you want them to make mistakes you really have to make them feel like you totally own them.