Watch your opponent’s betting and try to understand what he’s thinking when he bets. I used my opponents’ betting pattern against him and put it to pretty good use a few weeks ago playing online poker.

I was at the final table in a tournament in the casino, and I was up against a player that I knew fairly well. I was pretty intimidated at first, because I knew that he was a strong player and I’d had trouble reading him in the past. He was an aggressive poker player, I’d caught him in enough bluffs to take any of his actions with a grain of salt, but he showed a tendency to reveal his bluffs in order to suck players in when he had killer hands.

I played tentatively at first, and he’d bought the majority of the first few hands that we’d played. I was dealt some decent starting hands, and managed to even the score a bit and pull ahead with a few preflop bluffs, and for a while we were at a bit of a stalemate.

Eventually, a hand came around that I felt was worth betting on. I made high pair on the flop, so I raised and he called. The turn put a pair on the board; I raised him and he called again.

The river put a card out that was higher than my pair, and I put in a substantial raise in case he paired on the river. He immediately took two-thirds of his remaining chip stack and put it in the pot. Two-thirds? He didn’t want to risk his whole stack! Without hesitation, I called him all-in. He folded, I raked in the chips, and he never recovered.