I caught the new James Bond movie recently and can confirm it's as good as the newspaper reviewers suggest. Rarely has a big screen poker scene gripped the attention with such obvious force as it does in Casino Royale. Action-packed, exotic locations, beautiful people. The best Bond in years? Without a doubt. The best ever - well, maybe.
As you will appreciate, the stakes are incredibly high, but regular poker players will probably recognise one glaring error: there is no way the baddie would be making such obvious tells, something which James picks up on of course, but let's not spoil the movie for those who have not yet seen it!
Ultimately, I suppose it is experience that tells us how to interpret the advance signals which life frequently flashes at us. Such indications are constantly evident in most areas of our everyday lives: from sport, where you can bank on a footballer manager leaving his club as soon as he has received the 'full backing of the board', to politics, where once we're told that tax will definitely not rise - well, you know the rest.
The veteran poker player and writer, Mike Caro, insists that the easiest and perhaps most profitable advance signal to spot at the poker table is the opponent who makes a point of checking his chip stack as soon as the cards are dealt. Nine times out of ten, players who do this either already have an outstanding hand, or else they've been dealt a card which significantly strengthens their position.
According to Caro, 'average poker players could be big winners if they did nothing but look for this 'tell' and [then] play their normal game.
Experience also informs us of a handful of other obvious mistakes of which poker novices are guilty, especially evident in face-to-face encounters.
Not surprisingly, uncertainty heads this list: novices can have a phenomenal poker hand, but they will often hesitate about putting a large bet on at an early stage because, in short, they do not know how much to bet.
Another readily identifiable action which signifies the novice is his propensity to keep checking his cards after he has drawn a good hand. Excitement overtakes him and instead of behaving as casually as he may have done earlier in the game, he starts acting differently, providing a useful signal which serves to prod experienced players into folding.
It can get worse, because the regular combination of these two mistakes creates the most frustrating aspect of all for a relative newcomer, namely a sense that he's gradually being worn down. Unaware of how much to bet, he avoids playing risky hands and, as a consequence, tends to fold too easily. This results in his chip stack gradually being whittled away, so when a good hand does present itself, he no longer has the cash with which to support it.
Nevertheless, even under such trying circumstances, the novice will occasionally either play well or else get lucky and win a sizeable pot; his reaction to this is crucial.
If he assumes that luck has been against him, he will almost certainly feel that his chunky win is welcome evidence of his innate poker skill. Regrettably, his ego will not let him consider that he has been outplayed, thus creating a sure-fire excuse for staying in the game and losing a bundle.
The most difficult lesson for the novice to learn is this: if you're losing, the overwhelming probability is that you're being outclassed. It follows that before playing, rookies should put a limit on how much they're prepared to risk and once it's gone, they should leave the table and take the experience with them.
Granted, this takes real discipline, but it allows the novice to consider what went wrong and more importantly, means he is able to return and fight another day. Then, having hopefully learnt from his experience, he will stop throwing out frequent and helpful cash-draining signals to his opponents. One final word of caution though: don't expect this to happen overnight. It would be sensible too, not to copy the baddie's tell in Casino Royale unless you fancy coming to a particularly sticky end.
