Charlie Carrel's Opinion on Live Poker Hands

In a recent Facebook post, the highly-talented tournament crusher Charlie Carrel opened up about his thought processes that shape his decision-making in every hand of live poker. As a bid to learn more about how other players ‘think through poker hands’, Charlie gives a detailed account of how the cogs turn in his own mind beneath the jazzy hoodie.

He begins by talking about one of the most crucial ways of reaching an informed decision: by ‘trying to collate as much information’ as possible. As poker is a game of imperfect information, anything that you can pick up on about the possible strength of your opponents’ hands is extremely valuable.

At the live table, this is especially true. Too often, live grinders will find themselves switching off and only paying attention when they’re involved in a hand. If you do this, you are passing up on a ton of information that you could potentially use to your advantage in a later hand. With the additional potential for information gained by reading into physical tells, being focused at the live table compared with online can require a different eye. As Charlie admits:

"I’d say about 90% of my conscious attention, during live poker, is looking for and picking up live tells."

With over $5.9 million in live earnings since 2014, it seems fair to say that he’s doing something right. When you watch Charlie play at the table, it is clear that he uses table-talk as a means of picking up information. For those of you that haven’t seen it, he showcases this ability in a hand versus Lynn Gilmartin, picking off her bluff after asking her what her mother’s maiden name is.

However, Charlie doesn’t just throw ranging his opponents out of the window and go with his live reads. He explains that he sees these ranges as a ‘cloud’ that he is ‘moulding’ and ‘narrowing down’ street by street, using information that he compiles throughout a hand to reach a ‘binary decision’. He suggests that experience plays an ineffable role in the process:

"I feel like the more I play poker, the more accurately this cloud . . .  is representing reality. The information is stored somewhere in our brains in ways that we can’t understand."

There’s definitely something to be said for this, as poker is a continuous learning experience where your future decisions at the table will be heavily influenced by your past ones, even at a sub-conscious level.

Do you have your own strategy for decision-making at the table? Share your ideas below and help each other think about hands as optimally as possible.

(If you want to see Charlie’s post in its entirety, you can view it here. )