How To Fan Cards

Okay, let's have a look at fanning cards. Now, you may think, why would you want to learn to fan cards? But you don't want to go to a poker table or any card game and be all fingers and thumbs, so people think, "Oh, he's a complete beginner," and they try and take advantage of you, so you want to look like a bit of a player. So, let's look how we can make ourselves look a little cooler when fanning cards.

So let's look, look at two variants. We can look at having five cards in your hand, like playing a draw game or biddoki or one of these four, five card variants, and we are going to squeeze the cards in a professional manner. So let's have a look, we are going to tantalizingly look at each card, because we are going to slowly squeeze, we've been dealt our five cards, and we want to see what, how we got - what you don't want is to go like this, “Oh! Great, we've got one, a hand”.

We're going to do it slowly and seductively because we want to figure out exactly what kind of cards we've got, so we can are going to look. We know it's got six, so, good. Good start, two hearts in our hand.

We're going to squeeze again, we're just going to apply a bit of pressure on the top of the card with your thumb. Get a heart to squeeze out. Yes, we've got another heart, possible flush.

So we are going to squeeze it out again. Oh, it's red - now the heart, one more heart we've made a flush. So we, last one, we are going to apply a little bit of pressure to our back finger.

Hold it with the thumb. Squeeze again, its red! Is it a heart? Yes! A flush. Now, once we've got our pack of cards folded out, we don't really want to be holding them for too long.

Once you've got your hands, fan them back. Put them down. Put some chips or something.

Sit back. Relax knowing you've got a great hand. That basically is fanning.

Now, if you were to play Texas Hold'em, the worst thing you want to be doing playing Texas Hold'em, when you want to look at your cards, is pick them up and go like that. Not a good thing to do when you are sitting at a poker table. It looks bad, unprofessional, and people will go, "Okay, complete beginner".

What you want to do, you look professional. Give you an air of confidence and an air of seniority about your play. So what you want to do is hold your two cards in a cupping kind of situation.

You want to put your hands over it to make no-one else see your card. You don't want to give information away. And what you want to do - I want to try and show you - is you want to just lift up the corners.

Have a little squeeze. Just have a quick look, one little look. Put them back down, chip on top, play your hand.

Do not be picking them up going like this or like this or holding them or stuff like that. You're giving information away to this guy and this guy. You're holding them up.

Don't do that. Squeeze up, have a look, put that down. Play your hand.

Look pro, play pro. |How you handle your hand of cards reveals a lot to your poker opponents about your experience and confidence. Barry Martin at the International Club uses a five card hand to demonstrate how to fan your cards to professionally examine them, without revealing information to the other players and exuding and air of experience and seniority.