The key to being a winning play in online poker is extracting the maximum value from your winning hands and being able to get away from your losing hands. Determining the strength of your opponents hand is the best way to try to achieve the two things mentioned above and become a profitable poker player. An online poker tell is any pattern or trend that can give you information as to the strength of your opponent’s hand. Even though you are cannot physically see your opponents in online poker you can still pick up many tells such as their betting speed, their bet size, their chat box talk and more. In this article we will discuss some of the more common online poker tells in the hopes that you will be able to use the information to more accurately put your opponent on a hand in the future.

The amount of time a player takes to make a decision can often be a big indicator to the strength of their hand. For example if your opponent insta-checks this either means that their hand is garbage and they are waiting for the hand to be over or that they have a strong hand and are hoping you bet so they can re-raise . A good way to battle this uncertainty is to make a small bet. If the player has garbage they will lay the hand down and you will take the pot with the small but and if the player has a strong hand you can fold to the re-raise and lose a relatively small amount of extra chips. On the other side of the coin, when a player takes a very long time to make a decision this usually means they have a strong hand and are deciding how big of a bet they should make. You should usually put your opponent on a big hand when they take a long time to bet, but you can also use this as a reverse tactic and take a long time when making your next big bluff.

The size of bet your opponent makes in different situations is another tell you can use to gauge the strength of their hand. If a player makes a big over bet on the river this usually means they have a huge hand and want to get paid off. The reasoning behind this bet is that the opponent is supposed to think the bettor would never make such a big bet if they actually wanted to get paid off. Don’t be fooled into believing this. If you are up against a big river over bet you should get away unless you have the nuts. Another betting indicator is the minimum re-raise. This can either indicate the nuts or a bluff. Players will often make a minimum re-raise when they think you are trying to buy the pot. For this reason a good play here is often to call the minimum re-raise and see if they bet on the turn. If they check the turn then they have realized their bluff did not work and the pot is yours to take with a solid bet.

The last online poker tell we will touch on in this article is the chat box ranting tell. If a player recently lost a big pot and is going crazy in the chat box this is your chance to win however much money they have left. You should try to play hands with this opponent because if you are able to make a strong hand there is a very good chance that you will get paid off in a big way by the tilting player.

These are just a few of the more common online poker tells. Of course no tell is flawless and your opponents may often try to represent a strong or weak hand by using these general tells to mislead you. For this reason you should keep notes on players so that you are better able to understand their plays. Understanding how your opponents play is the key to beating them at your favourite online poker cash game.

Other Beginners Texas Hold'em Strategy:

Expected Value - very important for a beginning poker player

Table Position for Beginners Poker Player

Factors to Consider Before Moving Up Limits

Reasons You Should Take Notes While Playing Online Poker

Five Tips to Beating the Small Stakes