21 Tips and Secrets

Here are tips and pointers to help you make the most of poker tells. It covers observation (watching other players), how to use tells, hiding tells, bluffing, reliability of tells, how to resolve conflicting tells and more.

Observation

- Don't be in a hurry to look the cards. Watch the other players first.

- When it's not your turn or when you fold, keep an eye on the action. Be as interested as when you are in the hand.

What to Do with Tells

- If a player is tight, bluff often and bet seldom.

- If a player is loose, bluff seldom and bet often.

- When the tells suggest a player has a strong hand, you have these choices: a) if your hand is weak or marginal, fold; b) if you have the nuts, let him bet so you win more; c) if you were thinking of bluffing, don't.

- When faced with a player bluffing with a weak hand, you should call their bluff even with a marginal hand. Play a wider range of hands.

Disguise

- Wear sunglasses to hide your eyes.

- Memorize your cards so you don't have to double-check.

- If you are tight, do not arrange your chips so neatly.

- If you are playing loosely, stack your chips nicely.

Bluffing Tells

- Bluffers act unnaturally. They try to get attention when they bet and want to be invisible the rest of the time.

- Non-bluffers act naturally. They try to be innocuous when betting and are at ease the rest of the time.

Reliability of Tells

- Generally, poker tells are more reliable among novice players than experts. The latter may try to conceal them.

- However if a player is very unskilled, they can be unreliable as a tell is only as good as a player's understanding of their hand. If they do not know how good (or bad) their hand really is, the tell will mislead you.

Natural and Fake Tells

- When a poker tell is genuine, it only takes a moment, then it's gone. The player is not trying to draw attention to the tell.

- If a poker tell is an act, it is usually overdone and prolonged in order to get your attention.

Good Players

- Don't make it obvious to a good player that you read their tells. If you do, they will disguise their tells more next time.

- Good players like to play dumb when they have a good hand.

Bad Players

- Bad players are where the money is. Go to them.

Profitability of Poker Tells

- It is more profitable to identify a weak hand than a strong one. Recognizing a strong hand lets you save a bet. But identifying a weak one can let you win the whole pot. You get to play a wider range of hands that you might otherwise not play.

Conflicting Tells

- When tells seem to contradict one another, the one that is harder to fake is the more reliable one. For example, sweating cannot be faked, but the tone of voice can be easily changed. The head can be moved, but the eyes don't lie.

10 steps to improve your game

Every poker player who has read any book or magazine article about poker knows that thinking is a large part of the game. Unfortunately, many well intentioned players don’t know how to think about poker. They know there are many important decisions that will affect whether they will win, but they often don’t know how to get started. This overwhelms them and causes them to retreat to just playing based on their intuition – often an unprofitable result.

For those of you who have found yourself in this sort of quandary, let me start you off in the right direction. This is not meant to be an exhaustive study – but just the bare bones necessary to focus your attention on the beginning steps.

Learn the following in this order to improve your game:

Some basic tips for online play

Sometimes you’re running bad, or maybe you’re just playing bad. Sometimes it’s a combination of both. Running bad can put you on tilt subconsciously, which leads to poor play. But when your poker results start to suffer, particularly in online play where good players will take more than their share of bad beats, sometimes you need to step back and re-assess your play.

I’ve found that, most of the time, simply freeing myself of distractions and other influences that might affect my mind-set is the most effective way to renew my focus and see improved results. Here are a few tips that have worked for me:

Eliminate distractions ahead of time – This means turning off the TV, telephone and keeping the music down to a low volume. If you have children or pets to take care of, make sure their needs are met before you play.

Develop a routine – This means everything from signing up the same time before a tournament to sitting in the same seat position at the table. Every time I play, I click the “sit here” option on the bottom seat exactly in the middle. This helps me focus, as I never have to change my eye level and look for my seat, as I always felt a little awkward if my seat was in a corner position or at the top. Plus, just getting into a routine this way helps me focus on the game at hand.

Be prepared to play – This covers everything from being rested, showered and focused, to making sure you have no time commitments that are going to get in the way. If you are playing a multi-table tournament with 2,000 participants, you should anticipate that you will be playing for the next 5 hours or so. Clear your schedule. Do not play if you have another imminent time commitment. Also, make sure you have eaten and used the bathroom before you start. Just as is in live games, failure to do this will result in you missing potentially valuable hands at the table. The breaks are short; make sure you have snacks or beverages readily prepared so you can re-fuel in a timely fashion.

Eliminate distractions at the table – In addition to sitting in the same spot each time, I recommend turning off all avatar images and avoiding chat at all costs. Many avatar images appear intended to distract you and, let’s face it, some of them do. Whether it’s a picture of a bikini-clad, buxom model that has your attention, or some other sort of violent or semi-graphic image, it’s relatively easy to have your attention drawn to these images. Eliminate that possibility by shutting them off. Also, keep chatting to a minimum. If your opponent chats “nh” or “nice hand” after losing a pot to you and you believe his sentiment is sincere, a “ty” or “thank you” is acceptable, but do not draw out the conversation. If he is clearly being sarcastic, ignore him. Resist the temptation to engage in personal battles, even if someone types an offensive sentiment such as “nice call, donkey.” Engaging in prolonged chats will only distract you from the game and task at hand, and could possibly put you on tilt. Leave tilting to your opponents.

Follow the general rule of HALT – That is, do not play if you are hungry, angry, lonely or tired. As previously stated, make sure you are fed if you intend to play a long tournament. If you are angry, from taking bad beats or for some other personal reasons, it’s never a good idea to play because you will have a compromised mindset. Playing to kill time before you go to bed is usually a bad idea, too, as you will have less-than-optimal focus and be tempted to make plays you normally wouldn’t make.

Play better than your opponents – Isn’t this always the goal when you play? Of course, but this is meant in the most basic sense. Online players notoriously play too many hands, try too many ill-advised bluffs and overvalue and overplay starting hands. They refuse to fold when they clearly are beat, and shove all-in when they clearly are behind. The masses are asses … don’t be one of them. Don’t lose sight of the fact that patience is still a key virtue in poker. Many new players seem to crave instant gratification, and all it leads to is an early bust-out. So let everyone else ram-and-jam in every pot, and put all their chips in the middle on a three-outer. You, meanwhile, sit back and pick your spots. Be selective about your starting hands, and don’t be afraid to fold when you are beat. Don’t make foolish calls or push with marginal hands just because you’ve been running cold. You’d be surprised how huge an advantage a little patience will give you over your opponents