The Science of Poker Tells part four

Multi-tabling tells!

Because online card rooms afford players the luxury of playing more than one game at a time, this in itself opens up the possibility for a big fat tell. Believe it or not, many people get bored with the pace of online poker play (these people ought to try the 15-20 hands per hour in a live card game if they think that this is slow) and crave faster and faster action.

Of course, playing in more than one game in live online casino play would be very difficult but most if not all card rooms would forbid it anyway. But online it is a different story with many players playing four, five or even more tables at the same time.

Now there are many reasons why people multi-table but the main two reasons are because it enables good players to potentially increase their earn rate and it also enables action junkies to be involved in more action during the same time frame. Let us analyse that for a minute, if a good player wishes to play more than one table and wants to play four tables at once then they simply cannot play the same level of attention to each game.

This means that they may be playing a more tighter solid type of game on each table. By sheer definition, any decent player who is playing on more than one table is unlikely to be playing like a maniac on each table. Having the ability to play multiple No Limit Texas Hold’em tables does afford that player the opportunity to do more folding simply because they are receiving more hands per hour than most other players.

Of course it is worth mentioning again that it is a big mistake to simply generalise with any tell and this one is no exception. But the fact of the matter is that any player that is multi-tabling is likely to be focusing their attention on one of the other tables at the time that it comes to you to possibly attack their blind or to maybe bet and take the pot away from them. Success in poker comes from the accumulation of small seemingly insignificant advantages.

Betting pattern tells

This applies of course equally as much to bricks and mortar poker as it does to online play. One of the biggest tells in poker that good players exploit and bad players suffer from is betting patterns. This is the one thing that I look for the most in any poker game. It is also very important because you really need to know as soon as possible just what kind of game you are in and also what each and every player is up to and how they are playing.

Top players rarely have discernable patterns to their play but that is not the case with lesser players and novices. Usually when a pattern reveals itself then that is an indication that you are doing too much of something. Either too much raising before the flop, too much calling, too much folding, too much check raising too much whatever it is.

By sheer nature, human beings are creatures of habit and playing poker can reveal an awful lot about a persons character and personality away from the table. Anytime you spot a player who is blatantly doing too much of something then you simply store that information and use it to formulate a strategy that best exploits that pattern of that particular player.

In many games that I have played in over the years, there have been certain players who could have simply played with their cards face up and they would not have been any less handicapped because of the fact that their betting patterns were so evident. You almost do not need cards to beat these people and in many instances….you don’t!

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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