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Everyone who has been around poker for any amount of time knows what a “tell”
is. A tell is some type of action or body language that tips off what type
of a hand your opponent has. There are entire books written by professional
poker players that deal exclusively with tells. What does heavy breathing
mean? What does it mean when he tries to stare you down? Look away? Look at
the chips? There are literally thousands of tells that any given individual
has, and the general belief is that every single player has some sort of
tell--though many may be so minor as to be almost invisible!
Even many amateur poker players know enough about the basic tells to not get
caught with body language. Plus, sunglasses, long hair, and ball caps all
seem to be in. This makes facial expressions sometimes nearly impossible to
read. One of the best ways to get a tell on an opponent (and this method
works for online no limit games just as well as for actual in person games)
is to watch the betting patterns. Many players follow natural instincts on
how much to bet and when. Sometimes these instincts are good, and sometimes
this can play right into your hands. Instincts can often tell you when a
player is bluffing without having to know why, but instincts are exactly
that: instinctual. These means that they are pre-disposed to a pattern, and
if you can find some of those patterns, you have some powerful tells that no
one else at the table may have, or even be aware of.
One example from a table game I used to dominate:
At this weekly game there were several good poker players. No one was a
complete novice, and at least five of the ten of us consistently made money
online and at other games, even if it was smaller stakes. There was only one
female player at the table, Kristen, and she was as good a natural as I had
ever seen. I was making $200 a week just playing puny $1 tables and $5
tourneys, and she was the only person at the table who consistently placed
in the top three as often as I did, and at one point she beat me four weeks
running to win each table. I broke the streak after a week of only playing
online poker, because that mind set allowed me to suddenly discover how she
kept reading me, and also gave me a tell that seemed obscure, but made all
the difference.
I noticed that every time I bet ten, she knew every time I had the nuts, and
every time I was chasing. She knew this by instinct, but the tell was that
every time I was chasing, I used smaller chips to make up my $10 bet. Every
time I had it, I used the big chips. One time in the game I switched and
used the small chips when I had the top flush. She called me to the end, and
looked a little thrown off when I took the pot. The thing I noticed from
her, was that she bet five red chips exact every time she had the second
highest pair showing.
So every time a scary ace or king was showing as the high card, I would triple
her raise, and she would fold it. These are hands I usually had no business
winning, but they were also hands in past weeks that I lost money on.
Many of you may be nodding at this and saying sure, and seeing the
affirmative, but what’s the big deal about the second high pair, you ask?
Well, the most critical information I had wasn’t even when Kristen made that
five red chip bet like clockwork. Think about this carefully: if Kristen
bets five red chips every time she has the second high pair, what else does
that mean? Well for one, it means that when she bets high without the five
red chips, you know she has something higher, and when she makes a smaller
bet, she has the low pair, a chase, or high card. Because of that one tell,
I had a general idea of what cards she had about 80% of the time! That
is the part of poker tells not enough players understand. The tell says she
has second high pair, but the lack of that tell also gives you information
on every other bet she makes.
I swept the next two weeks, and would have had three, except for a terrible
series of three bad breaks in a row to another player, but he wasn’t
nicknamed “The River” (or “Bastard”) by accident. Concentrate on the betting
tells and remember that the lack of that tell does not mean you do not have
nay information. Quite the contrary, it should give you more than maybe
anyone else at the table can imagine! Happy winnings.
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