Reading your opponents

 

Needless to say, both in live and in online poker, many of the decisions you’ll make will be based in a good measure on the reads you manage to get on your opponents.

There will always be tells to clue you in, the tricky part in reading the opposition however, consists in making fairly accurate assessments while in the same time, trying to prevent your opponents from doing the same on you.

 

In live poker, reading your opponents will be much easier, because of the plethora of poker tells that will be available.

Look for facial expression. Conveying information through our facial expression is an integral part of human nature, and quite possible an integral part of our survival mechanism. That is exactly the reason why it’s so difficult to suppress. While the eyes may be hidden behind spectacles, the face of the player will never be totally concealed.

Look out for a player sending out way too obvious tells. People usually like to act. When they happen upon a good hand, they feel they need to take that extra bit of effort to make it safe.

 

Signs that a player has a weak hand usually mean his on a monster, and vice-versa.

 

Probably the best poker tell of all however, is something that is available both offline and online. The betting pattern is a better tell than anything else you may come across, for the simple reason that there is no way any player can avoid to bet in order to reach a certain goal.

If you want to make someone pot committed on the flop, you need to bet (unless he’s a maniac ready to do the betting for you). Betting patterns tell you the most about his/her hand, and the best thing about them is, the relative anonymity the internet offers to players is not a hindering factor as far as this read is concerned.