Pay Attention to Online Poker Tells

People speak not only with their mouths but with their entire body. Most players in competitive games such as poker unconsciously "speak" to express feelings like anxiety, fear and confidence in a body language known as "poker tells." Good poker players can detect and use to their advantage even the most subtle poker tells in their opponents such as a twitch on the lip, an eye movement, or even a slight tremor on the finger.

With practice, poker tells will give you a pretty good idea of your opponent's hand who is sitting right across the table from you. But what if you can't see him, like if you are playing online poker?

Not to worry, because even if your online opponent is invisible to your eyes, he still would tend to give away some clues about the cards he's holding by the way he responds to the game at hand. The first online poker tell that you should keep your eye on is how fast your opponent makes his move.

How fast your opponent responds to a given situation is probably the most readable of online poker tells. For instance, one indication of the weakness of you opponent's hand is if he takes a lot of time at checking. And you can usually test this by seeing if he folds if you raise the pot. To be sure, if you can read your opponent's hand in this manner, chances are, he can read yours as well. That's why if you are going to check an average hand, don't take your time. A long pause for reflection is indicative of weakness in online poker where the pace of the game is pretty fast.

One of the poker tells that isn't too hard to spot is the check/ caller who always wants to know every flop before he decides to wager and will only call a bet just to see it. Once you've uncovered who among your opponents is this type of a player, all you have to do is raise the pot and they will oftentimes fold. Check/ callers often lose their chips on calls and blinds and go home all cleaned out. Knowing the psychology of this kind of a player, if he raises the pot you must fold unless you think you a have a great hand as well.

Another player is the chatter box who seems to take his time chatting with other players analyzing previous hands and doesn't seem to be focused on the game at hand. This generally indicates a weak player and you should humour him by letting him chat his chips away while you focus on winning the game.

A player that is pretty hard to read is the "maniac," who usually over bets every hand, often going all in. You can never know if this type of a player has a weak or a strong hand and the only way to deal with him is go up against him if you get a top hand, which could either take him out of the game or make you double up.