Poker Face
The idea of the poker face is one that goes back way before the online poker boom, or the rise of Texas hold em. It is an idea based on the concept of poker online as a state of trickery and war, where the image you put up at the table is all that you are. If you can hold a good poker face, the legend might go, you can finesse your way through situations, trick others into giving you what is theirs, all because they have no read on you, no judgment besides that what you present.
The idea of the poker face is to show nothing, to give nothing so that your opponent is essentially in the dark. As simple as it may sound, showing nothing is easier said than done. While it may seem in our body that we are flat faces, blank eyed, the small things in our eyes and posture give away what we don’t even know we are saying.
The trick, then, to a poker face is to level all things out to a single state. Chris Ferguson and Phil Ivey are great examples of players who show absolutely no difference in expression from hand to hand. They have no emotion showing, no variation of posture. It is business, math, calm. To construct this kind of poker zen requires practice and patience, a removal from the physical effect of the numbers. Silence in the form.
