Poker Tells

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The Real Art of Poker

It is often asked on poker forums how to play certain hands in certain situations. These questions assume that there is some sort of formula for doing so. While using set formulas can greatly assist novice and intermediate players, this process will not allow a player to reach a high level of play. To do so one must go beyond this into the area of poker tells and poker psychology and this applies whether or not you are playing live or online.

Many people would argue that poker tells are not possible in an online environment but they would be categorically wrong. You may not be able to see your opponents but you will be able to see them bet and raise and fold and with what frequency this occurs. Poker tells with regards to betting patterns are often more accurate than physical tells even though it is the physical aspect that people associate with this subject.

Let us look at an example, you are playing in a no-limit hold'em full-ring game and you know that the tight playing rock to your left has only ever re-raised pre-flop on three occasions. You have over one thousand hands on this player in your Poker Office database so this in itself represents a poker tell. No doubt that this player is only ever re-raising with pocket aces and pocket kings to do so with that kind of frequency.

This is highly exploitable play because you can play knowing the entire content of your opponent's hand! You can easily stack this player if they are deep stacked without them even knowing the content of your hand until it is too late. You will know whether or not you have overtaken their premium pair on the flop and play accordingly and bet and raise in order to get them to stack off. So poker tells can come at you in lots of different ways even in online poker. Another classic poker tell is how many chips a player has in front of them. If the buy-in is $200 and a player buys in for $117 then this is a clear indicator that not only is this player not a strong player but they are also more than likely buying in with whatever they have left in their account as $117 is an odd amount to buy into a game with a $200 buy-in.

Even online, poker psychology comes into play. What you need to remember is that behind every avatar on your screen is a living breathing human being who values money just as much as what you do. They will be watching you in many cases just as closely as you watch them. Let us look at another example to see poker psychology at work.

Your opponent raises from the cut-off and you call with the 10d-9d on the button. Both of you are very deep stacked in a $400 no-limit game and you each have $800 on the table. The blinds fold and the flop comes Jc-7s-4h giving you nothing but an inside straight draw! Your opponent makes a continuation bet and you raise, they go into the tank and fold and you win the pot.

We have used psychology here because we have used the power of our stack to scare an opponent into folding who also has a huge stack. By raising on the flop we have threatened to escalate this pot into a huge one where we could both end up all-in for our huge stacks. Our opponent is unlikely to want that and will only call or re-raise with a strong hand.

But what they don't know is that we would have let our hand go had they shown any further interest in the hand. We have essentially only risked a very small percentage of our stack while the threat of our opponent potentially losing his entire stack has pushed him from a hand that is probably stronger than ours, this is poker psychology!

Of course poker tells and poker psychology is not just restricted to online poker but to live poker as well. Being able to see your opponents and for them to be able to see you adds a whole new dynamic to the game. In fact I know several online players who simply could not handle tough live games for this simple reason and they each had tremendous difficulties in hiding their own tells. One of the key poker tells in live play is timing tells. This is how fast you bet, call and raise. Many players are unaware that they are actually calling or raising faster than they normally act whenever they have a hand of some sort. For example if someone bets and you are getting four to one pot odds and you have a flush draw with two cards to come and you instantly call then this is a serious tell.

This has basically told your opponent that you had a decision that did not involve any thinking. Many top live players try to make their play after counting to a certain number in their heads in order to try and eliminate this type of tell. Some players like Phil Hellmuth for example try and eliminate physical poker tells by sitting in the same position every time they are active in a hand.

Poker tells and the exploitation of them is a very important part of the game but spotting them within your opponents betting patterns is of far greater importance. These are often referred to as betting patterns but in actual fact they are tells all the same but simply taken within a betting context. One of the primary reasons for online professionals using software like Poker Office is to try and eliminate their own personal betting patterns. At the end of the day we are all creatures of habit and we tend to do the same things repeatedly and this is when we can reveal tells to our opponents and they in turn reveal theirs to us.

This article was written by Carl "The Dean" Sampson who has been a professional online poker player, poker theorist and writer for eight years. Prior to that he was a blackjack player and has written three books on poker and casino games