Free Poker Online Guide to Poker Tells
When playing free poker online, players are trying to obtain as much information as possible. Since everyone’s cards are dealt face down, the only two things you know for sure are your own cards and the community cards. This is where ‘tells’ come into play as good players are constantly analyzing every single part of your play and demeanour. Playing poker on line is obviously completely different to live play; however there are a few things to watch out for on line which I will come back to, but for now I am going to concentrate on live play. I have been playing poker in my local club and various casinos for a number of years now, and have picked up a few tells and ways of reading players.
Too many new poker players have seen the telly and get caught up with the eyes as a focal point of telling a players hand. Unfortunately from my experiences apart from the very novices who may raise an eye brow here or there I don’t find the eyes as giving the best tell tale signs. Additionally when I’m playing at a typical 10 person table, the chances are over half of them will be wearing tinted glasses of some form.
So, forgetting the eyes, a massive thing to look out for is body language. How are they sitting? What’s there posture saying? Are they moving around erratically? A big body language tells I see a lot is a player who has folded a good number of hands consecutively and has slumped in their chair. The dealer deals and they suddenly sit up quite sharply not realising they have just announced they have a possible monster.
Only good and experienced free poker players can remain motionless and you may be surprised at the amount of body language signs you give away without even realising it. You may notice an experienced / decent player readjust themselves, this is done vigilantly due to the fact their self conscious has remind them to remain neutral.
Quite often body language is accompanied by table chat. Chat at the table and the signs you give away as a result are easier to hide as you can simply remain silent throughout- which is not a bad idea during the big games. You would be shocked at the level of skill some players have at recognising distinctive changes in tone and rhythm and knowing what this means to your play. There are other fundamental parts which can also explain loosing at the cost of general chit chat. You could genuinely become distracted taking your concentration away from the game. This is the difference between the regulars and the pros. The pros are masters at using all their ability to fish for signs: by playing while talking to you they’re actually finding your weaknesses while only showing you strength. Most of the time you don’t realise what’s going on till you inevitably remind yourself at the end of the game of the friendly chatty guy who ‘lucked in’ and took home the pot.
Other well known tells include sweaty palms, looking at your cards then directly looking at your stack, licking your lips, and even a bulging vein in the neck. Along with body language and table talk another big tell is betting patterns, and this is where I come onto the internet. Everything I have mentioned so far is useless online. Betting patterns are the only pieces of information you can get from players in an online environment. A lot of newish players tend to play free poker by the manual, pocket aces bring a bet of 4x the big blind, KJ is 2x the big blind, and suited connectors bring a flat call. By watching players at your table for a short time you will be amazed at how they stick to these principles. Once you have established players betting to a pattern, clearly you are at a big advantage.
When playing a hand as a result of reading what you believe to be a tell, always be careful as you may have misread the signals, and you may be playing a shark feeding you false information.