When you visit a casino, either a brick and mortar or an online casino, you will play against a wide variety of players with different styles and at different skill levels. Depending on the game type or game limits or tournament buy-ins will help you in determining the type of opponent you are up against. I personally like to play at a table that is fun and social, so I often play at home games, but when you’re at a casino you can’t have control on who is sitting next to you, so hopefully this helps you understand the guy sitting right beside you.

The casual “fun” player is the person frequently seen drinking and talking it up at the poker table discussing what they do for a living and really enjoying the social aspect of the game. This type of players think of poker as a hobby or simply as a way to get out of the house. They enjoy low limit NL and limit Hold’em and usually don’t get upset whether they lose or win because they are simply happy to be playing. In a perfect world this is the person you could have a table full of every time you play; however, you never have to underestimate them. the fact that they usually don’t mind loosing don’t make them and easy catch.

The regular card room players (Norm from Cheers) are the largest percentage of devoted poker players. These are often retirees, homemakers, students, dealers who are playing between shifts, etc. Most of these players will usually are more experimented than you; many of them also have experience playing online poker and even when they are not as hardcore players as some pros, it is easy to see these guys playing relevant poker tournaments and winning a lot…How many times in the recent years we have seen plumbers, students, cab drivers and regular workers winning important poker events?. These players are good to watch for their mannerisms and usually have a good working knowledge of the best card room deals such as what would be best Casinos with comps for poker play or Bad Beat Jackpots, tournaments etc.

Finally, the professional players are those who make a living or most of their living exclusively from playing poker. These players use many poker strategies and normally play with only one intention: winning and making money. This category not only includes the professional poker players you see on TV or playing the major poker tournaments in the world , there are also local Pros that play as a way to support themselves or people who live from playing poker in relatively small poker rooms and casinos. You will not usually find these players playing on $2/$4 limit or $1/$2 games, any player who sees poker as a way of living usually play the higher stakes. This is not the happy go lucky player; most pros are cold and play a calculative form of poker, so play carefully when you find one of these guys at your table, and keep in mind that their main object is finding the most effective way of taking your money away