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Many online poker players find it tough to keep their table presence calm and constant when they first begin to take part in serious live games. When it comes to poker, it is vital that not only do you not give off tells about the strength of your hand, but also that you don't give out tells about your psychological state at any given moment.

In all honesty, hinting to players that you're feeling frustrated or tilting is far worse than any general tell about your hand because it allows opponents to outplay you on numerous hands as they watch both your behavior and general play go downhill.

Phil Ivey and Barry Greenstein are arguably two of the greatest players in poker that you should study if you want to improve your table demeanor. They both tend to give nothing away with regards to how they're playing and feeling both during hands and after them. In general, they'll respond in pretty much the same fashion no matter the outcome of the hand. Even the most astute opponent in the world would have a hard time working out a great deal about their mental state based just on their table presence.

You can compare this to a player like Phil Hellmuth, who will frequently go off the boil in response to various situations at the table. A breakdown in table demeanor is one of the most obvious tells in poker and Hellmuth shows what can happen to players who fail to control their presence.

In any game of skill, table presence makes a massive difference, and one of the true greats was world champion backgammon player Tim Holland. As Jon Bradshaw writes of him in his book 'Fast Company':

"As the game began a small crowd gathered around the table. He was unaware of them, playing fluently and with a kind of rapt indifference. He did not speak; he did not smile; his eyes rarely left the table. There was a palpable arrogance in his play. He rolled the dice and moved the men about the board with the poise of a man who knows that victory is only a matter of time".

So, we can see that no matter what the game throws at you, you need to make sure you give your opponent no clue as to how you're feeling at any given moment. In poker, information is king, and some of the most serious tells you can give out are to do with how you behave after bad beats and bad play.