As I already wrote elsewhere, it’s far from impossible to get a read on your opponent in online games. That’s why I decided to sum up the ten most important ‘tells’ you can observe in those games. Today I present you the first five tells.

Poker players use the term tells to describe non-verbal behavior and plays that give some indication of an opponent’s strength of weakness in a given hand. Reading tells online is tricky, as players have minimal data to interpret, and must rely on reading response times and the strength of bets into the pot to attempt to determine where their opponents stand. While the sources of online tells are limited, these tells can nevertheless provide players with valuable information and are a topic not to be disregarded when learning how to play poker.

1. Single- or Multi-game player
The first thing you want to determine when analyzing your opponents is whether they’re focused on just one game or playing on multiple tables. If the player responds rapidly to situations on the board they’re most likely playing just one or two tables, while consistent lags indicate that the player is playing at many tables. This information can become crucial when looking to response times for a tell.

2. Picking out patterns
While some tells are very suggestive, there is no such thing as a universal tell. Your best bet at reading an opponent is to detect changes in behavior. This means you need to pay attention to each player’s basic betting patterns to be able to spot unusual behavior. For example, multi-game players may lag in response to a bet, which could be read as a sign of strength, when the player is simply occupied at another table.

3. The player on a tilt
Playing poker is about taking money from weaker players. While the weaker players at a table are usually the first to go, those on a tilt can be an excellent source of chips. The easiest way to spot the player on a tilt is to look out for the player abusing every other player at the table in the chat box. Players on a tilt aren’t thinking rationally, so will often put all their chips in the pot when they shouldn’t. Going all-in several times in a row after losing a pot is another sure fire sign of a player on a tilt.

4. Check box betting
All online poker rooms provide players with the opportunity to use check boxes to play into a hand by raising, calling or folding. Use of checkboxes is very revealing as they are generally used by players focusing solely on the strength of their own hands rather than what the players around them are doing.
The most obvious indication of check box betting is an instant raise, check or a call. The nature of the bet will tell you everything you need to know about your opponent’s hand strength, with an instant check showing hand weakness, an instant call indicating strength and an instant raise a sign of a very strong pre-flop hand.

5. The delayed bet
Many online players attempt to trap their opponents when holding strong hands by delaying their bets into a pot. In fact this practice is so widespread that it has developed into an almost universal sign of hand strength. So long as you have established that your opponent is not playing on multiple tables, any delayed calls or raises should be treated with extreme caution.

Those are in my opinion some valuable tips for everybody who decides to give online poker a serious try. Next time i’ll give another 5 tips, but you can already start to make some profit with these ones. See you on the tables !

Tags: betting pattern, checkbox betting, delayed bet, multi-game players, non-verbal behaviour, online tells, players on a tilt

This entry was posted on donderdag, november 20th, 2008 at 14:54 and is filed under Online Poker. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.