Online Tells
By James Worth

Betting speed: Online tell?

In the virtual world of playing poker, players who are used to playing live do not have the visual tells that accompany a live, brick and mortar game. Or, do they?

After nearly 7 years of honing my game online I have realized that there is a wealth of online tells that can be used to your advantage both when making a decision on a players action, to trying to deceive your opponent into making a play based on your own online tells. Before you will ever see or realize the importance of the information being fed to you from other players, you will have to be very focused on your game. To pick up the subtleties in your opponents' action, you will have to be paying close attention to the game in front of you. You will have to be watching the action very closely and looking for patterns. Believe it or not, players get into patterns and do not realize that they are giving away a lot of information that could very well hurt them in the way and speed of their bets. They think that because they are not sitting in front of someone who is studying them closely that they need not worry about giving away information. When in truth, the experienced online player will get some pretty accurate reads on the strength of their hands by the speed and delays of their bets.

One of the most obvious and critical mistakes that a less experienced online player makes is clicking action buttons before it is their turn to act. The check, check/fold, fold, call and raise buttons etc are over used and detrimental to your game if you want to give an observant opponent a little edge on you. It is like a flashing neon sign that says that you missed the flop or do not have a big hand when a players sees the action come to you and pass you in a millisecond because you pre-checked the check or check/fold button. An observant player will bet into you after seeing you check instantaneously when it looks like you pressed the auto-check/fold button before the action has come to you. If he has witnessed you press the auto-check button in previous hands and sees the instantaneous check followed by a fold to a bet before, he will do it again to you. He has picked up a little edge on you simply because you have pressed an automatic action button in advance. That is a mistake that many players make when they are playing too many games at once. They are like robots, simply playing better hands and ignoring the intricacies of the table and surviving on sheer number of hands played. In reality, playing less games, observing more, can help increase a players return on investment. To combat this auto action button mistakes that players make, simple advice would be to rarely use them. Or, better yet, if you are going to use those buttons, have a purpose in mind. Train your opponents into thinking that your automatic action button behavior is predictable. Just when you have them trained, you have really set them up. Many more experienced players will use that tell, to create a false tell. They will auto check a weak hand or lack of connection on the flop and fold to a raise a few times. The opponents will see the instantaneous action and be trained to think that you have missed.

Turn it around when you have flopped a massive hand in earlier position than your opponent. Auto check before the action has come to you so your opponent has seen the instantaneous check when the action has moved to you. Trained now, he will bet into you giving you the ideal situation to check raise your opponent, trapping him into your play because you trained him. Do this a few times and your smarter opponents will become wary of you knowing that you have some tricks and moves up your sleeve. A quick check in position after your opponent has checked into you and you have flopped a monster may just induce a bet from your opponent on the turn or river. Where as, had you waited, then checked it may look like you have put too much thought into your action and send up warning flags to your opponent. Again though, you have to know your opponents. You will have to be able to discern who the more experienced players are and who is capable of trying to manipulate the speed of their actions to throw false tells at you. The majority of players online won't have so much finesse.

Another basic online tell is taking a longer period of time to make your decision when the action has come to you. Many players, if they feel they are behind and drawing will take a fair amount of time to make their decision of their course of action in the hand being played out. Typically, the vast majority of players delay means that they are not too comfortable with their hand. Typically for the vast majority of players, a longer delay infers weakness. Typically, the observant player can follow through to push their opponents off of their hands if their opponents have shown a track record of folding after longer delays. This is true of the majority of players that you will see online. An example would be that you have raised pre-flop and got calls. After the flop has come down you make a follow through bet and your opponents think about it for quite a while. Typically if they call, if you follow through again with a good bet on the turn, your opponents have displayed a track record of folding after taking so long to decide on their action after your flop bet. This is an observation that you can make on the majority of players if you are watching closely. You can not however, take the delay as gospel information that your opponent is drawing.

If you are playing a very good online player, the delays that they are using may be to throw false information at you to induce a follow through bet. The better players will mix up their speed of action to confuse you and set you up. Again, the speed of your action can be used as the foundation for laying a trap to be used later. Setting up your opponent to see your delays as weakness then springing your trap after a longer delay by either inducing another bet, or raising your opponent after a longer delay. By delaying for a period of time before you raise your opponent, you may just be telling your opponent that you are not too sure of your play, thus inducing a call.

The insta-call following a flop bet can be an intimidating play that you can use on your opponent. After your opponent has bet, rather than thinking about it, the insta-call, or quick action following his bet can slow your opponent down. It can be used to try and demonstrate that you have flopped a piece of the flop, or that you are holding a strong hand. It may just slow your opponent down. If your opponent has seen you insta-call before and either bet or raise the turn you may have set up your opponent for a play to take down an extra pot later. There are times when the more experienced player will insta-call a flop bet not only to slow their opponents down, but to set up a potential bluff in a similar situation later. There are times when the more experienced player will insta-call a flop bet with next to nothing just to set up their opponents for a bluff. It is another little trick in your deception arsenal that could gain you chips or dollars on the table. Quick action can confuse and intimidate your opponents into playing their hands weaker. When watching your opponents you have to be observant enough to not only pick up on these little online tells and betting patterns, but be wary enough of the more experienced players that will use those tricks and online tells against you. They will use them to confuse and set you up jockeying for every little edge that they can.

Some professionals advocate using the same betting speed all the time so there can be no reads made against you. I think that is pretty good advice but I think it is geared to very inexperienced players. As people's skill and confidence levels increase you have to find every advantage you can, and close down or minimize any and all disadvantages that you have. There is a fine line between being a winning player and a break even player and some of that comes in the intricacies of the game, rather than the knowledge of odds and plays. Being observant of the games you are in is critical. Being able to manipulate your opponents and set them up in situations that most players are not capable of creating is key to separating yourself from the field.

What makes the truly great online players so consistently successful? Being observant of their opponents patterns. Being observant of their own patterns. Using the information against their opponents, and creating situations for your opponents to THINK that they are using the information against you. The reality there though is that you are using those betting patterns to set up your opponents in later pots. By mastering your own betting patterns you are setting up a weapon and a slight edge over your opponents that the vast majority of players won't have in their arsenal.

If you want to truly see these online betting patterns and tells, you will need to set yourself up in an environment where you can focus clearly on your games without many distractions. Similar to a brick and mortar game or tournament, if you are chatting up someone at another table, or watching the football game on an overhead television, you will miss key information being given out in front of you. The same can be said of online poker. If you want to take your game to the next level, turn off the TV's, play in an environment where you will have as little distractions as possible and focus on what is happening at your table. There will be a wealth of information in front of you for the taking if you pay attention. You will be able to set up your opponents like many people are not able to because you are aware of the betting patterns that you have and can use them to manipulate your opponents into making the plays that you want them to do.

Knock Em Dead

James *KrazyKanuck* Worth