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 Online Poker Tournament Betting Patterns and Spotting a Bluff.
In online poker tournaments spotting betting patterns and bluffs becomes an essential part of your game. In online poker betting patterns become even more essential for getting a read on your opponent. Betting patterns are important information to gather on your opponents. It really does not matter if you are in a live poker tournament or in an online one. If it is live you can also get other reads on your opponents such as certain tells that they might have. In online poker since you cant really get any tells on your opponents the only thing that becomes the equivalent of a tell is any betting patterns that emerge.
When you are not in a hand is a great time to watch for betting patterns. You want to watch the hands closely when you are not involved. This can help you gain valuable information that can save you money later. If the hand goes all the way to the river, watch for how your opponent plays his good hands, and how he bets when bluffing or on a draw. If you can ascertain when he is strong and when he is weak based on the betting patterns he has established you can take that information and use it when you are in the hand with the player.
For example lets say you are in a online poker tournament and you observe that when youre opponents raises 3 times the blinds preflop he usually has hands like AA, KK or QQ all the way to 1010 and if he raises 5 to 6 times the blinds he usually has AK, AQ, AJ. Now that you know he is doing that you can play your hands accordingly. Lets also say that you have observed that when he has raised preflop he always makes a half the pot size follow up bet on the flop no matter if he hit or not. If he didn’t hit he will ck on the turn. This kind of information is golden. Lets say you have position and you have Q10 of spades he raises to 6 times the blinds in middle pos. everyone folds to you . You call. Youre hand is most likely an underdog here however with the information you have you still have lots of ways to win and you have position. The flop comes 259 two are spades so now you are also in a great position to win. He bets half the pot. Here you can either re raise him because you have lots of outs and the flush draw or based on your information based on his betting patterns this flop isn’t likely to have helped him and he will likely check to you on the turn you can then just steal the pot from him if he checks. Sure enough you call the turn is 6 diamonds. He checks. Now that you have seen him do this before then fold to a bet with out a match you bet half the pot he folds. Ok you had outs and it was a smart play however lets say you are in the same online tournament the same situation and the flop comes like before but it’s a rainbow flop and you have no flush draw. Since you observed this player check after making a bet on the flop when he didn’t have anything and you also observed him folding to a bet from the caller on the turn. You can now make the same play and with fair certainty expect to take the pot.
This is the power of knowing the betting patterns of your opponents in an online poker tournament. It is just as useful a tool in live poker tournaments when you can actually use this information in conjunction with any tells that you might have picked up on. The other thing about spotting betting patterns it also lets you know when to get out of a hand. In online poker this is very valuable. Lets say you have seen your opponent flop a set twice and slow play it twice then in the turn do a check raise. Now you know if you are in there and you have top pair and you get check raised its likely that this guy has a hand. The other thing to watch for is amounts. Does he bet his monster hands small in order to suck as much money out of you as possible or does he bet his big hands big like he is stealing. This also will help you later on.
These same betting patterns can help you spot bluffs. Usually players will change something when they bluff. Not the good ones however a lot of poker players that are not super strong will change their play when they are bluffing. When you see a change in the betting pattern pay close attention to the hand and see if he was bluffing. If you see a guy do the same thing once or twice when bluffing tuck that away and remember it. Chances are when he is bluffing he will do it again. In online poker tournaments the information you can gather on your opponents is very scarce therefore betting patterns become powerful tools in any online poker room you may be playing in.
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