Poker is a microcosm of life. When you walk into any room, people who have never seen or heard of you form an opinion. They observe how you’re dressed and how comfortable you are in your surroundings. They assess your looks (from ‘needs a dog collar’ to ‘red carpet material’). Well, don’t we do the same when a stranger enters our poker game? How others perceive and react to you is key to poker success. In this article, we’ll focus on cultivating and conveying an advantageous table image. I’ll offer examples from my extensive cash game records. Many of the concepts will also apply to tournaments, but their rapidly changing circumstances (such as arbitrary table changes and play based on varying chip stack sizes) often lessen the importance of table image.

There are two absolutes in any discussion about table image: that you have a table image and that your opponents may or may not be observing you.