First Impressions - Part III: Creating False Impressions

Your opponents react not to what you are, but to what they think you are, and their first impressions have a huge impact on their image of you; they greatly affect the way they process all later information. They will overemphasize information that fits their impressions and ignore or minimize conflicting data. You therefore should work hard to create a false first impression.

As the dandruff shampoo ads have so clearly stated, "You never get a second chance to make a first impression." To have the maximum impact, start with highly visible actions that color everything they will see later. Straddles are very visible, especially if you straddle the first few times you're in position. Raises, especially check-raises, are much more visible than calls, and checks and folds are almost invisible.

If you straddle at your first opportunity, three-bet with a pair of deuces, isolate someone who raised with A-K, and win, many people will remember it long after they have forgotten that you folded most hands.

Many people – especially at lower limits – also pay much more attention to how you look and sound than to how you play, and even good players are affected by these signals. You therefore should create a false image by your looks, clothes, voice, words, and general "attitude."

If you are young, have green hair, three earrings, and a nose ring, appear to have had too much to drink, and raise crazily your first hand or two, nearly everyone may label you "Wild Kid," and the weaker players may never notice that your subsequent play is very solid. If you're an older woman who dresses conservatively, speaks rarely and softly, plays hardly any hands, and almost never raises, some players may see you as a "Little Old Lady" and let you get away with bluff after bluff.

Of course, the first impression you try to create has to be credible. That "Wild Kid" and "Little Old Lady" couldn't swap images. There must be some consistency between your appearance and the image you try to create. Otherwise, they will see right through your act, realize you're deceptive, and watch you closely, which is exactly what you don't want them to do.

There also must be some consistency between your early and later actions. Despite the biasing effect of first impressions, people are not blind or stupid. If the disparity between your early and later play is too great, all but the least observant players will see that you were faking it.

Your image also must fit your strategic objectives. Since so much has been written on this subject, I won't discuss the benefits and costs of various images. For example, you probably know that a loose image will get you more action, but undermine your bluffs. You therefore must decide what image is best for this situation, then do whatever will create it.

Every well-run business bases its advertising budget on a cost-benefit analysis, and you should apply the same principle. If you spend too much, or the benefits are too slight, you're making a bad investment.

For example, if you spend 15 big bets on advertising, you probably can't get it back. If you plan to play for only half an hour, you shouldn't spend anything on ads; you won't have time to recover your costs.

You also must consider the quality of your opposition. Weak players are much easier to deceive than good ones. Since strong ones will look closely at the way you play, don't spend much on advertising against them.

You also should consider how rapidly the players turn over. The more rapidly they turn over, the less you'll benefit from advertising, because the newcomers won't know what you've done to create a false impression.

Tournaments are a special case. Because the stakes go up, you can get a great cost-benefit ratio if you'll be playing against the same players. David Sklansky addressed this issue in Tournament Poker for Advanced Players: "If it looks like your table will break up soon, … make no 'advertising' plays, since you will probably not have time to reap the benefits … If … you will have to play at a table for a long time … setting up plays for the future [becomes] even more important… than in regular side games." (Pages 55-56)

Because nobody can see you, you have far more options when playing online. You can pretend to be someone who would be unbelievable when face-to-face. A huge, aggressive young man with a beard and tattoos can get away with calling himself "Grandma_Susie." In fact, some men have gotten great results by using women's names and pictures. They say that other men underestimate their skills or make false assumptions about their styles. One of them wrote: "Many men will give you lots of action just to play in hands with you if you are willing to respond to their almost inevitable flirting. And the non-flirtatious men often go into a knight-in-shining-armor mode and stick up for you; frequently, one can end up having much of the table "on your side," and they seem to fall all over themselves to lose to you, help you, offer advice, provide info about themselves and their playing styles, and so on.

More than 2,000 years ago in his classic, The Art of War, Sun Tzu wrote: "All war is based on deception," and several writers have made the same point about poker. In fact, without deception, poker can't exist; if we played with our cards faceup, the game would fall apart. Because we don't know each other's holecards, and we misunderstand how our opponents are playing, we all make countless mistakes, calling when we should fold, checking when we should bet, and so on.

This series has shown that first impressions are one of the most important deceptive factors. They distort the way all later information is processed. We therefore have two critically important tasks. First, we must understand how we are biased by first impressions and do whatever we can to reduce these biases. Second, we should create first impressions that confuse our opponents, and then reinforce these false first impressions to maintain and increase our edge over them.

It isn't easy to think or act this way. You may be much more comfortable when yielding to your biases or acting naturally, but it is natural to lose. In fact, most players are long-term losers. If you want to be a winner, you have to do the unnatural things that winners do.

Alan often plays at royalvegaspoker.com as one of its team of experts. You can order his book, The Psychology of Poker, through Card Player.