The last thing that winning players focus on are the opponents at the table, trying to identify patterns and tendencies. It’s not a magic formula and you’ll never be right 100% of the time but you can often pick up on some pretty common tendencies if you pay attention to your opponents.

If an opponent check-raises only when they have the nuts, you should probably respect that and fold if they check-raise you. If you notice that a player loves to bluff on the river, you should consider calling when you might otherwise fold against a player that only bets on the river with very strong hands and never bluffs.

A lot of beginning players make the mistake of playing poker while they have many other things going on, watching television, chatting on IM, talking to friends, etc. While it’s definitely possible to multi-task (and fun), you should always be playing close attention to the table, if you want to maximize your chances of winning.

You never know what little thing you’ll pick up on that may save you bets, or hint that you should raise your opponent to bluff them out of a hand and cause them to fold!