Poker Player Profiles: John Juanda
One of the great things about watching John Juanda play pokern is his supreme ability to study a player intently in the moment and figure out completely just by subtleties how he should react. There is a lot of hype about ‘tells’ and ‘reads’ in poker, though a lot of the time, among the big pro tables, you are dealing with players who are so experienced that their body language reveals next to little.
In the face of this, John Juanda seems perhaps more focused than any other player on studying the individual motions of even the greatest players in the world and judging, based on the way the air moves around them, or the lines of their face, when it is right to move in and when it is right to give up on the hand. It is a silent judging, unlike the reading styles of players like Daniel Negreanu. It seems a more intuitive and holistic approach, which in the game of poker is refreshing.
Outside of his reading ability, John Juanda seems to be more selective than others in the cards he plays preflop, picking spots based on where he thinks he can have the best chance to make a hand, and using his reading ability as supplicant fodder when he misses. It is a hybrid style that can shift even in the midst of itself.
