Always watch the play
Especially when you’re not in the hand
It's more important to watch the play when you're not in the hand than when you are. You'll probably play only 10% of all hands, maybe 20 or 30% if you're very aggressive. Or very lucky. This means you'll get 3 to 9 times as much information about the other players from watching the hands you're not in. When a player is blocking my view of the table by, for example leaning way over the table to text someone, I ask them politely to move their phone off the table. Most comply. Some get irritated and angry. When I'm not in the hand, the angry respondent usually says, "You're not even in the hand!" That's a clue that they're not a very good player.
Of the players who get angry at my request to move their phone off the table, they get very angry. I really don’t understand it. I’ve been cursed and threatened. In those cases, I often get the floor manager to come over, because many dealers won’t do anything. That’s a problem these days. Some dealers address bad behavior at the table, but most don’t. In the bigger tournaments like the WSOP, they don’t even address cheating, such as when players show their cards to their neighbors before they bet or after they fold. It may seem innocent, but they lift their cards high off the table and hold them away. Even if this is accidental, it gives the surrounding players an advantage. Most dealers are too busy dealing and don’t notice or just don’t want to get involved, so I have to call over the floor manager. Unfortunately, sometimes even the floor managers don’t care because they’re busy handling complaints at many tables.
Interestingly, reporting one player cheating or being disruptive usually makes me an enemy of the entire table because it slows down the game. Of course, the players seeing another player’s cards don’t want to give up their advantage, so they complain loudly that it’s no big deal. However, the other players are generally foolish for allowing cheating or bad behavior. Bad players simply want to get on with the game rather than eliminate any player’s unfair advantage.
Then again, one professional player friend of mine once told me he was jealous about how I could get so many players mad at me. As long as I can keep my cool, I not only take away their unfair advantage, but I “put them on tilt,” which makes them play worse.