Texas Hold'em Strategy - "Poker Tells"
Poker Tells are what we would also term “body language”. This is an observation that any poker player will see in his follow players and be able to use this information to determine the strength of their cards and hence be able to play his/her game of poker accordingly.
Online it is a little more difficult as you do not have an opponent that you can visibly see, but that does not mean that there are not a few pointers that can give you direction.
The first pointer we will cover is the Instant Automatic Check. This is a very easy action to work out as any player who does this normally is willing to fold, and hence cannot be holding a very strong hand.
Secondly, if a player raises his bet by using the “bet/raise all” button then you can be pretty sure that this player is holding a really strong hand and is quite confident. This can be an action taken by someone who is bluffing, but it is not generally a chance one wants to take as few players will willingly bluff their way if the stakes are reasonably high.
Thirdly a very good action to take notice of is if a player takes a long pause, and then raises you. After a long pause a player has had the time to think about what he is doing, and he must have a pretty strong hand if he feels that a raise would be in order. If his or her hand were average, the assumption would be that they would call rather than raise.
Fourthly, watch out for when your opponent quickly calls your bet. This will indicate that they have a moderate hand bordering on being semi-weak. This will be more of an intimidation call as this player will want you to think that he is so confident that he does not need to even think about placing his bets.
However, having pointed out these few tell tale signs one must always remember that there is no hard a fast rule attached to anything, and what you may read as a weakness could be a strength or a bluff.
