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Online Poker Tells

Poker is one of the most popular and interesting games in the world today for a good reason: through skill, players are able to turn things in their favor and thus to make money off their less knowledgeable and skilled peers. Poker is a betting game, and there are several strategy aspects to it, but quite possibly the most important is the psychological part about reading one's opponents while in the same time giving off the wrong reads to mislead.

In live poker, players have a multitude of possibilities for establishing reads. When face to face with another person, a skilled poker player can pick up a myriad of different reads, and he can even actively mine for such reads by engaging into a conversation with the targeted player. Some players have quite literally made a living off their opponent-reading skills. Daniel Negreanu is a player who’s positively adept at reading his opponents. His online game is way off the pace of his live one though: he doesn’t seem to be able to dominate online games the way he does offline ones and all that can probably be attributed to the fact that online poker reads are a lot more sparse and less reliable than live ones.
Sure enough, as long as a player does anything at all at the table, he’ll generate reads. Therefore, it would be baloney to say there are no reads in online poker. There are too, though – because players are protected by the limitations of the software their poker room offers – these reads are much more subtle and almost all of them are based on the betting patterns.

Here’s a list of some of the most useful online poker tells.

The fast check is one of the most obvious tells in online poker. Think about it like this: what do you do when you pick up a subpar hand or when you completely miss the flop? You set the check/fold option and you shift your attention to another table. The fast check usually means that you’ve just run into a guy who is willing to give up his equity in the pot. Put some pressure on him to make him fold: it won’t take much. The fast check can be used in a tricky way too to mislead, but most of the time, the read is spot on.

The delayed bet. This one is rather straightforward too. The guy who takes some time before he fires out a bet probably does so because he has a good hand and he’s weighing in on how much to bet. The delayed check is usually either a player who tries to trick you into thinking he has the goods, or a multi tabler who just can’t get around to your table fast enough to act in a timely manner.

Your opponents’ general betting patterns hold valuable clues too. A player who fires out a massive bet preflop then follows it up with a feeble attempt at intimidation on the flop, probably had a decent drawing hand that missed the flop entirely. Always keep an eye on how much your opponents bet: most of the time that’s how players give away the most valuable information.

The fast bet is a pretty relevant tell too. If your opponent fires a bet into you as soon as the action gets around to him, he’s trying to intimidate you. Just think about what you do when you set your mind on making an opponent fold. That’s right, happens every time.
The bottom line about online poker tells is that because most people never even think about the fact that they’re giving out tells, most of the time they’re spot on. There are exceptions too though.

The only thing worse than playing while broadcasting tells left and right is playing without rake back. While you do need certain skills to mask your tells or to mislead through them, signing up for a rakeback or a poker prop deal doesn’t require anything but a few minutes of your time.

 

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