Are Online Tells Real?

It goes without saying that poker is a game where you must know your opponents as well as their tendencies.  And the way you figure out your opponents is by the tells they give off at the table.  You’ll no doubt find plenty of tells being given off in live play since it’s harder for players to conceal their nervous ticks and habits in front of people.  On the other hand, you’ll have a much more difficult time discovering tells in the online poker setting.

Of course every run-of-the-mill strategy article on online tells claims that it’s easy to find them as you only need to pay attention to the speed at which people make plays.  Those who are holding an excellent hand, but want others to think they’re weak will take a longer time to make a play.  On the other hand, those who want players to think they have premium cards will make their plays much quicker so as to appear strong.

The truth is though that this strategy was developed several years ago before online poker became flooded with lots of new and talented players.  Back then, you could get away with universal strategy such as this because players weren’t as good as they are today.  But now, pretty much everyone knows this played out advice and are fully aware of how to fool others who think this way.

What’s more is that most people in today’s game like to multi-table so they make their plays quickly anyways.  Considering this fact, the amount of time a person takes to make a move is pretty much irrelevant.

The only way to truly figure out online tells is by studying each player individually and finding out their tendencies.  Now this is no doubt much harder than just using a universal strategy such as the aforementioned one, but it’s the only way you’re truly going to be able to read someone.  And remember, there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all way of reading a player online.