Tip 6: Keep your hands concealed. If you were going to rob a convenience store, you wouldn’t wave your gun around the parking lot, pointing it at customers and flaunting it all the way up to the cashier as you walked in. That would totally ruin the surprise element of a stick up and thus hamper your chances of successfully pulling it off before what you’re up to is discovered. Your poker hands, well, you should teat them the same as you would that concealed pistol. Not that you should go around stealing from convenience stores, but you get the idea.
The key point to take away here is that you’ll be more successful in playing poker online if you learn to keep secrets. This means not giving up your hands and not volunteering information about your hands that you need not have volunteered in the first place. This is as true in online poker as it is in life. It may sound cold, but getting information is much more valuable than giving information. There are people around the poker table that will love to share their thoughts about things, especially hands. Caro has a genius strategy that he uses when he’s playing, and it takes a bit of discipline to do this, as we’re all egocentrists at heart, but instead of talking about himself, as many players are prone to do, he’ll ask them about themselves, for example after a hand goes down, he’ll ask how that particular player would have played the hand. Then, when the time is right, he’ll see that opportunity arise against that player, he’ll take advantage of it, and call down and win the pot.
The moral of it all is: you’ll gain a lot more by listening and retaining than talking and telling.
Caro challenges everyone to try this technique not only on the felt but in real life. He says, “people are flattered to be asked of their opinions,” and a lot of controversy can be overcome by simply asking someone how they feel about, or would handle a situation. The key he says is, “gathering as much information about others as possible, while keeping your own secrets concealed.”
