Poker Fair US

Peekers and the Poker Player

The trouble with peekers is that they can give away valuable information that a good player is trying to conceal. Peekers are often spectators and players who have folded their hands. Peekers kill a bluff, mirrors the real value of a hand or of a card. If you're on the other side of the table and there are peekers behind your opponents watch out for the following patterns:

1. The level of their interest in a peeked at hands.

2. Their timing of peeks and repeeks.

3. Their reactions after the opponents have folded

4. Their eye movements and their areas of interest immediately after the peeked a hand.

However, when you're the one being peeked at, you'll be encountering a lot of problems there. If you're opponents are good, your peekers might as well have shown signs of readable patterns on your hand. Peekers are also equivalent to a flashed hand. Or their behaviors can upset your strategy. Or it can simply kill your concentration. And finally, when someone peeks at your hand, that's just equivalent to inviting more peekers.

So, more often than not, you shouldn't allow people to peek at your hands. However, the best in the business, the pros, sometimes use peekers to their advantage by carefully selecting persons who could look at his hand. But what possible good would this do?

Well, by letting a person peek into his cards, the good player wants to convey a certain information to either the peeker or to his opponents. Second, it can advertise plays that pushes loose players to play tightly or poor players to do better (like raising the stakes). Third, it creates a careless atmosphere amongst his opponents. Fourth, it upsets opponents by not letting them peek. And lastly, it might as well be a permission to the peeker to look at his opponents too.

On the other hand, a good player should still have control of peekers around him. He does this by never peeking at other players himself when he folds, which avoids the obligation for them to peek at his when they fold. Instead, after folding, he directs his attention on observation and planning that does not involve peeking.

Moreover, a good poker player develops a consistent way of shuffling and holding his cards in his hands to discourage peeking. In refusing other players to peek his cards, he politely says "I'll show you later". And when he folds, he buries his cards so no one could know about them. He can bluff (lie) about them later anyway.