 Spotting and understanding Poker Tells.
 Poker
tells come
in many variations and forms. Online poker tells are probably the hardest
to spot and analyze. Mainly Poker Tells are utilized in real live poker games
where you can see your opponent and asses any clues that his or her body
language is giving you. One of the best books written on poker tells is Mike
Caros book of poker tells. This book on poker tells is a great guide to
getting you started on spotting tells. Online tells are much more complicated.
Your really only have one clue online and that is the betting
patterns of your opponents.
Some people think that the time that it takes for a player to respond online is
a tell. This is a very unreliable assumption for several reasons. For one lag
time occurs on the net so what looks to everyone else like the guy is thinking
may just be the delay that is present in his response reaching the server. Also
many online poker players play more then one table so the delayed response may
also just be that they are in a hand on the other table. That is why I
find that response time can be misleading. Now if you feel confident that the
response time has been consistent when a guy does something use it. A more
reliable poker tell is usually betting patterns online. People can hide their
emotions at the table but they all have to bet. Betting patterns combined
with watching for other physical tells can become a powerful weapon when playing
poker. The other thing here is if you can use the two together you will be able
to tell what your opponents have with greater reliability. Lets say for examples
sake that you notice a guy every time he tries to steal a pot he moves the chips
in the pot aggressively and he usually makes an unusually large size bet. Now
that you have observed both of these things it will make it easier for you to
tell the other players hand. Lets say he bets the pot but the aggressive chip
move is absent. he may actually have a hand and since you knew that the tell is
absent but the betting is there something might be different. the more aware you
become at the poker table and the more information you have on your opponents
the more profitable you will become. I try and use both of these in conjunction
with each other to come up with a more reliable result. Caros book of poker
tells is an excellent place to start learning about tells and what they mean.
Mike Caro is definitely the authority on poker tells.
A
lot of your poker tells have to do with the psychology of poker. Poker is a
game of deception and strategy at its highest levels. Complex moves are
involved that may also involve misleading body language. The easiest rule of
thumb when it comes to poker tells is that weak means strong and strong means
weak. This just basically means when someone is acting very aggressively they
are usually weak. Why would someone with a strong hand want to intimidate you
out of the hand. Wouldn't they want you to stay in and get as much money as
possible. When someone acts weak they usually have a strong hand. Someone acting
weak is doing so to get as much money out of you as possible. So the general
rule is strong means weak and weak means strong. Now this is dependent on the
poker player. Observe your opponents when you are not in the hand and see how
they handle their strong hands. When you see a show down now use that
information combined with how they acted. Some people will act strong when they
are strong and act weak when they are weak. That is where the art of spotting a
poker tell comes in. You have to decide which is which. The rule above generally
applies, however it is important to study your opponents to see if you can spot
any patterns any pattern that helps reveal their hand is a tell that you can use
to leverage to your advantage.
One
other real common poker tell is when you see someone's hands shacking
when they are betting. This poker tell most of the time means that your opponent
has a monster hand. Some people misinterpret that as a sign of weakness however
this is almost always a sign of strength. So if you see this one get out of
there unless you have a monster hand as well.
If
you have any poker tells that you would like to share with us whether they are
online poker tells or other tells you have seen and taken advantage of please
share them with us in our poker
forum. |
