4:16pm: Perhaps one of the most overlooked aspects of heads up poker online is the presence of tells on both sides. Think about it, how many times have you possibly tipped off your hand in the last 6 months or so by betting/raising too fast, too slow, or perhaps by not raising at all? Let’s take a look at which tells are obvious, how you can spot them and also how to conceal these tendencies. Keep in mind these tells are what I call “level 1″ tells, which operate under the assumption that your opponent doesn’t know that you know these are tells. An example of a “level 2″ tell would be something from the perspective that your opponent knows that you know quick betting indicates weakness, so they will quick bet a hand in strength to intentionally give off weakness.

1. Weakness Tells

• Quick bets. Like I mentioned above, those who bet their hand rather quickly are usually holding nothing more than one pair. Betting so firm, so fast is an attempt to communicate to you, “my hand is so strong that I don’t even have to think about betting”. Good players can see through this, and will usually make a play or, at the very least, optimize their play for what they assume their opponent is holding.
• The min bet. Don’t worry if you think that someone is only doing it to trap you with an attempt to force you into a raise. In all likelihood, the person you’re playing is not thinking that much, so if you need to raise for value, don’t be afraid to do so. Also don’t be afraid to try an take the pot from someone who keeps doing it repeatedly.
• Overbetting the pot on the FLOP. When I call this a “weak tell”, I might be using the term loosely, but I consider one pair to be a weak holding postflop, so by definition this tell is spot on. Notice that I emphasized the word flop, which we will get into later. In this case, usually when people overbet the flop, they are usually holding a pair, but are not necessarily looking for a call and are usually dreading a shove. If you can beat one pair in this spot, you are nearly going to be good 100% of the time in this spot.
• Quick checking. Usually when someone checks very quickly, they just want to move on to the next hand. When someone takes less than a second to check, I will usually take a stab at the pot - with probably a 66% success rate, which gives me good faith in this as a tell of weakness.

2. Strength Tells

• 4x raise preflop. Some things in life are given: death, taxes, and the fact that when someone raises 4x the pot preflop, they are probably holding a small to mid pocket pair. People usually raise more with hands that are harder to play, so they really don’t feel like seeing a flop with hands like this most of the time. A lot of people have trouble playing 77-JJ, and they’d much rather take it down uncontested because they won’t know what to do when overcards come out. Only problem with this method is that they will either win a small pot, or lose a big one. Pay attention to this next time because if you have QQ+, you can shove and will almost always get snap called by someone who is behind 4:1 who assumes you have AK or AQ.
• Long delays followed by betting. When people do this, it’s usually an attempt to communicate to you that their hand is weak enough that they need time to think about betting. When someone does this, I try to stay away unless I’m confident my hand is stronger.
• Preflop limp re raises. You’ve got KJoff in the big blind. Your opponent limps, and you want to make him pay for it, because after all you’ve got a pretty good hand heads up. That is, until he comes back over the top after having initially limped into the pot. If this happens, odds are your opponent perceives you as aggressive and knew you were going to raise pre flop. He also doesn’t believe you will have the disclipline to lay down a marginal hand in this spot - which you should - because he is more than likely not bluffing.
• The huge river overbet. Ever find yourself in a situation where the pot is like 150-250, and all of a sudden, randomly on the river your opponent fires out like 540 into a relatively small pot leaving you wondering what in the world is going on? After all, you just rivered two pair - this seems like an easy call, right? Wrong. More often than not, your opponent is holding a minimum of top two in this situation.
• “Just calling” on every street, followed by a huge bet/raise on the river. Good players will do this when they are weak because they will assume that you will assume that you have just been slowplayed, and are attempting to get you to lay your hand down. Most of the time people aren’t this advanced, and being as such you really have just been slowplayed. It’s probably a good idea to lay your hand down in this spot.

If you find yourself doing ANY of the above, drastically cutting these tactics out of your play can work wonders for improving you ROI. Good players can spot these things, and even sometimes average players. What I used to do is to keep a bunch of small post it notes next to my monitor, and anytime I caught myself giving off a tell, I would make a note on my monitor to make a conscious effort not to do it the next time. Tells are nothing more than bad habits, and most of them come natural. This is why you have to literally go out of your way not to do some of these things, until eventually — not giving off tells has now become a good habit for you.

Spotting these basic tells can also improve you ROI much the same way. Since we can’t see things such as facial expressions and body language online, we have to use the only tools we have at our disposal, such as timing tells and betting patterns. The tells listed above are very basic and are only a small part of equation, hence the name “level 1″ tells. Stay tuned later on for some tells on a more advanced level.

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