Online Tells

Conventional wisdom says that there’s no such thing as online tells. How could there be, reckons conventional wisdom, when you can’t see a foe’s face, or hear the timbre of his voice, or watch his hands shake as he pushes chips into the pot? Even the way that he swigs his beer (or, famously, per Rounders, cracks his Oreo cookie) can tell you whether he’s on a monster hand or a monster bluff. But how can you check out his cookies, his beady eyes, and all of his other body parts from half a world away? Conventional wisdom says that you can’t.

But conventional wisdom is for conventional thinkers, and as any savvy Internet poker player will tell you, reliable tells abound online. Being a savvy Internet poker player, you doubtless know this already, but let’s review for the inattentive kids in the back of the class.

The Timing Tell: You’re playing no-limit hold’em against some slackjaw from Canada, screen name “SassCatchYouAnne,” who has shown herself to be a typical Internet Cally Wally: She calls too much, raises too little, and chases too far. You raise from under the gun with pocket jacks and everyone except Anne folds. The flop is 9 7 6. You bet two-thirds the size of the pot. She thinks and thinks and thinks — almost times herself out — and finally calls. The turn is the 2. You bet, and she instantly raises you all in.

Does she have the flush? Of course she has the flush. Her hesitation on the flop was all about, “Do I have the odds to call?” And her instant raise on the turn was that of a straightforward player making a completely straightforward play. Now, all you have to do is get out of her way. Interestingly, a lot of players will call here, which just proves the difference between picking off a tell and acting on it correctly, but that’s a discussion for another time. For now, just do two things with timing tells. First, be on the lookout for players whose oscillating pace of play betrays information about their hand or their thinking, or both. Second, never oscillate yourself. Always take the same amount of time to act. Don’t let your hesitation give you away.

The False Stall: Am I not discounting in this discussion the possibility that the timing tell is actually a false stall, designed to make me think she’s got a tough choice when really she’s got a monster? Sure, that’s a possibility. On the trickiness scale, it’s about on a par with pulling a coin from behind a toddler’s ear, and is therefore well within the realm of most players’ capabilities. So, let me say this: If you’ve seen a player like SassCatchYouAnne essay a false stall before, suspect her of it here. If you haven’t seen it yet, don’t assume it now. In other words — always and reliably — treat online players (like all foes) as kosher until proven tricky. Moving on …

Pattern Tells: Online poker happens so fast that it’s often easier to see patterns of play online than in the real world. In a real-world cardroom, for instance, you might notice that the player two seats to your right seems to be attacking your big blind from the button with alarming frequency. You wonder if he’s got real hands or if he’s just in love with the real-estate raise. In the real world, you might get a look at how he handles the button three or four times an hour. Online, that button comes spinning through his (virtual) hands every few minutes. It won’t take you long to see a pattern in his play. If he raises from the button most of the time, you know that he doesn’t always have much of a hand, and you can reraise with a fair amount of impunity, and confidence that he’ll fold.

Chat Tells: Every Internet site, we know, has yammerheads who yack away to their demented hearts’ content. You’ve encountered some of these rude boys, I’m sure. You outplay them because they’re morons, but because they’re morons, they think you’re just lucky, and when you beat them, they type their pain into the chat box: I hate you, I hope you die! What does this tell you about their state of mind? That they’re angry, on tilt, and ready to dump off all of their chips. And that’s a tell — a tell told voluntarily by a player in his own voice.

Can a player fake this sort of rage? Sure, but most don’t bother. Most people who vent spleen into the chat box do it for real, and for a purpose: to relieve the psychic agony they’re in. They’ve just suffered at your hands, and yelling at you (or someone else) is the only thing they can think of doing to make themselves feel better. That’s not just a tell, it’s a meta-tell; it’s not a situation-specific tic, but a whole road map to their entire (flawed) state of mind. That’s some powerful information.

Buy-in Tells: Anytime you see someone buy into any game for less than an adequate amount ($40, say, in a $1-$2 blinds no-limit game), you should assume that he’s timid, scared, running really bad, or otherwise unwilling to put an adequate amount of money into play. Push him. Punish him for his weakness, and assume that his weakness is real until he shows some spine (he probably never will). Remember this: Short money is scared money — online, in real-world cardrooms, and possibly on other planets.

Pre-action Tells: As you know, every site offers you the option of making your moves in advance. If someone has no interest in playing his cards, he can click check/fold any and go grab a beer. If he has a monster, he can bet/raise any and go to war with guns blazing. These pre-action buttons, of course, cause his actions to appear on the screen instantaneously when it’s his turn. You, who are paying careful attention, will quickly note which choices are made in the moment and which are made in advance. This tells you much. An instantaneous raise, for instance, says that he has a hand so big that he doesn’t care who does what in front of him, while a raise with hesitation betrays a drop in confidence. As with timing tells, you want to use other players’ pre-action tells as a reliable indicator of how much they like their hands, and, yes, beware of those savvy enough to reverse these tells on you.

As with real-world games, people start their sessions trying to play their best. At first they’ll be on their game, mindful of their tells. But then, inevitably, one of two things will happen. Either they’ll start winning and become less concerned with playing perfectly, or they’ll start losing and potentially go ballistic. No one plays perfectly all the time, and the lightning speed of online play gives us many exploitable tells, if only we know what to look for.

John Vorhaus is the author of the Killer Poker book series and the poker novel Under the Gun. He resides in cyberspace at radarenterprizes.com. Photo: Gerard Brewer.