Online Poker Tells
Reading Internet Poker Players
This article is about online poker tells
and reading Internet poker players.
Other pages on this site describe how to recognize various online poker player types and behaviors. For example, a good poker player recognizes when his or her opponent is on tilt. And a good Internet poker player also knows the difference between a tight aggressive player and a loose aggressive player.
Once you learn how to spot the playing tendencies of the other poker players at your online table you will be at a strong advantage when playing against them now and in the future. With luck, our site will help you become a better poker player.
Here are some of the things we hope to teach:
- How to tell if an online opponent is tight / aggressive, tight / passive, loose / aggressive or loose / passive.
- The best strategy to beat each type of player consistently over time.
- How to spot tells and fake tells.
- How to stop giving tells on your own play.
- How to vary your play to make it harder for opponents to put you on a hand.
- Which playing style you should use against each type of player. Many poker players think that they should play the same way all of the time. The truth about great players may surprise you.
- How to recognize tilt in your opponents play and also in your own play.
Your Goal in Online Poker is To Maximize Your Winnings
Too often, Internet poker players get caught up in things that aren't important to their overall goal. Your job as a poker player is to maximize your winnings in every way possible. This does not mean you try to win every hand; it does mean that you need to make the play that will show the most profit in the long run as often as possible.
The challenge is to repeatedly make the best decisions with limited knowledge. For example, you will rarely, know what cards your opponent holds, but with proper study you can usually put them on a narrow range of hands.
Reading Online Poker Tells
Reading online poker tells can be challenging, and it's not an exact science. There are many things to consider, including how your opponents have played in the past, the consistency of the speed of your Internet connection, pot size, and what has happened in the previous few hands.
Because you can't read your opponents' body language (you can't see them), you have to use other clues in order to pick up on Internet tells. How long it takes your opponent to make a decision on an important hand can be a clue to the strength of their hand, but it's not 100% accurate. Online poker sites have a limited amount of time in which a player must make a decision, so you can't rely solely on timing to get a read. Also the speed of your Internet connection and the speed of your opponents Internet connection can sometimes make a quick decision look like a slow one.
A more reliable way to learn about your opponents' tells is to study their playing tendencies. The more you know about how they played in the past, the more likely you are to understand how they will play now and in the future. The mistake of many below average poker players is to ignore past tendencies, or (even worse) just not pay attention.
Many poor poker players don't even consider playing tendencies to be a tell. This is one of the reasons they will continue to be poor poker players.
To learn the your opponents' tells, you need to pay attention every time you are at the poker table. Each page on this site covers a different part of improving your game through poker tells. And most of what's presented here will not only help your online poker game, it will also help your live poker game.
Below is an overview of the content on the site.
Taking Notes in Online Poker Games
Very few online poker players take notes about their opponents while playing. Every major poker site has a note taking ability built into their software, which makes it easy to take a quick note and stores all of your information so you can use it the next time you play against an opponent. As you play more online poker, you will realize that you end up playing thousands of different players over time.
It's impossible to remember how each one plays without an effective note taking system. Don't make the mistake of thinking you will remember how different players play. Either use the built in note taking ability of the software or keep hand written index cards in an alphabetized file by your computer. Becoming a winning poker player is not easy, but it is possible with the correct systems and dedication.
Online Poker Tilt
One of the most profitable streaks you can hit while playing online poker is to recognize and take advantage of when an opponent is on tilt. Players on tilt make poor decisions and tend to throw money away chasing bad draws. If you can't recognize when an opponent is on tilt you won't be able to take advantage of them.
On the flip side, you must make sure you either don't go on tilt or that you're able to recognize when you are starting to tilt in order to stop playing. Just like when taking advantage of an opponent on tilt can make your whole playing session profitable, by playing on tilt yourself, for even a short time, you can turn a profitable session into a losing one.
Online Poker Bullies
Just like in live poker, you will sometimes run into bullies online. Poker bullies are easy to make money from. The trick is to recognize the bullies. The other trick is to know the correct way to play against them.
Tight Aggressive Online Poker Players
A tight aggressive poker player is the most challenging player to beat. Tight aggressive players play few hands, but they raise a lot with the hands that they do play.
By not playing very many hands, they only enter pots with their strongest hands and usually when they have a strong position. This gives them a better chance to win because they aren't entering pots with poor hands.
By playing aggressively, they force their opponents to make decisions more often than passive players. Every time an opponent is forced to make a decision, it's an opportunity for them to make a mistake.
This is the type of poker player you should learn to be and play this way most of the time.
Loose Aggressive Online Poker Players
Loose aggressive poker players can be the most challenging opponents to play poker against. But they are can also be some of the most profitable once you learn how to take advantage of their playing tendencies. They tend to play many poor hands in an aggressive manner, putting too much money in the pot when they have the worst of it.
Their biggest weakness is entering the pot with hands worse than their opponents on a consistent basis. They make up for this to some degree by playing aggressively, forcing hands that are slightly better than theirs to often fold. But it's not a profitable long term strategy unless the rest of the table is filled with very poor players.
Tight Passive Online Poker Players
Tight passive online poker players can turn a small profit in many online poker games because their competition is so poor. This profit comes completely from the fact that they only enter hands with their best starting hands which improves their chances to win. But by not playing their best hands in an aggressive manner, they tend to win less on their winning hands and they allow their opponents to draw to better hands without charging them the right price to do so.
Once you recognize a tight passive player, it is pretty easy to take advantage of them. If you are a tight passive player, you need to learn how to be more aggressive when you do enter a pot to maximize your winnings.
Loose Passive Online Poker Players
Loose passive poker players play more hands than most of their opponents, and they check and call instead of betting and raising most of their hands. It's impossible to win on a consistent basis as a loose passive poker player. Learn to recognize this type of player, and learn how to take advantage of them. This alone can make you a profitable poker player in most online games.
You need to also recognize loose passive tendencies in your own game in order to not be taken advantage of. It is often hard to see the shortcomings in our own game, but if you want to be a winning player you have to learn how to diagnose your own playing problems.
Getting Rid of Your Own Online Poker Tells
The first thing you need to do is learn what your possible online poker tells are. You can then use strategies to make sure your opponents can't use them against you. Strategies for eliminating your Internet poker tells include taking the same amount of time to act on each hand, varying your tendencies within a narrow range that is still profitable, and using deception randomly to throw off your opponents.
One of the best things about Internet poker is that most of your opponents are not paying enough attention to pick up on tells anyway. So if you do make an occasional mistake, it does not often hurt you. But if you always try to play at your best and make the best decision you will find that you make fewer mistakes as you gain experience.
Anyone can get rid of their online poker tells with just a few tips and tricks.
Online Poker Bluffing
Bluffing is a big part of poker, and learning how to spot a bluff (as well as learning when is the best time to use a bluff of your own) will improve your poker game. No one likes to be bluffed out of a pot that they would have won, but most players take this thought too far and end up calling too many bets when they are behind in the hand.
On the other hand, many poker players bluff too often. The best poker players bluff rarely. They use the rest of their hand to set up their bluffs. They also learn which players are likely to fall for a bluff and in which circumstances a bluff has the best chance of working.
Poker players who win consistently will have many playing sessions where they never bluff or where they only bluff once or twice the entire session. Sometimes the threat of a possible bluff (when used correctly) is more effective than an actual bluff.
We've tried to present a lot of information that can help you win more at online poker. Start with the areas where you need the most help, study those sections, and then move on to the other areas of the site. You want to be thorough and make sure there isn't anything else you can learn to improve your game.
This page about online poker tells and reading Internet poker players was last updated on August 26, 2010.