Originally Posted by Steve-O

Question of the week: What are your 3 greatest strengths/assets at the poker tables and why? Not good starting hand selection or aggressive play, but personality traits and skills.

My 3 greatest strengths

#1 - My ability to read people. Honestly, this is just something I can do naturally, sometimes I don't even observe anything but I simply KNOW. It must be something I am seeing subconciously. obviously this helps me zilch in online games. I sometimes have a hard time trusting this intuition and 9 times out of 10 it burns me when I ignore it.

#2 - My memory. While it's not photographic, it's pretty damn good. It lets me focus on the players, the game flow, and so on. Instead of trying to recall something that happened 15 minutes ago, it's just there in my head.

#3 - My open-mindedness. I like to play devils advocate for just about anything, it helps me understand people and how their minds work. I then use this to help me through tough decisions: I can use my poker IQ to come to a conclusion, my reading ability to confirm or deny this opinion, and then finally if need be I can really get inside my opponents head and run around a bit, to see where he's comin from and what he's thinking. I've always been able to quickly chacterize people upon meeting them (this may go along with my ability to read people, but I think they are slightly different), and also let new information come into play.