What is your poker face? It’s an expression that’s now used widely beyond the game of poker, as much as anything it is known as a pop song now by the extrovert performer Lady Gaga, apparently about bisexuality, but it just goes to show how it can be used to describe any situation of where someone else is trying to hide something. So the real question here is how we go about determining the gaming style and behaviour of an online poker player? As poker is one of the most universally popular games, even the characters in Friends played it, we can be sure that there are ways of reading our opponents, even when they play online.

Tell It Like It Is – The Old Way

Firstly let’s look at how we would do this in classic, or offline, poker. You may have heard of the phrase a poker tell. Well, this is where someone exhibits a certain behaviour before they do something or if they have a certain strength, or weakness, in their hand. The pokerology.com website makes a good point, there are two types of tell, betting patterns and physical tells, these physical tells are only relevant in offline poker and can quite simple such as reading excitement or nervousness, and can be faked as well, so the better you get to know an opponent, the better you might learn their tells, but they can do the same to you.

Classic Amateur Online Tells

I found a particularly interesting article that lists 9 classic online tells and this is a particularly interesting one I think. I’ll not go into the list in detail here, you can read the whole article yourself, but much of it is about not giving away you are a novice player, many of these behaviours involve using the automated aspects of the online game such as posting blinds early and automatically calling before your turn. Why is this an issue? Well, it shows that you are not giving every play consideration on its own merit and are repeating the same pattern of behaviour most times and this shows that as you only bet when you have a good hand, which should be spotted by a good player.

What Is An HUD?

An HUD or Heads Up Display is a piece of software that works alongside your online poker game software and it analyses your opponents play, and also your own! Most serious players use one, so if you a re going to be a regular online player then it’s probably advisable to use one. But which is best for you? It really depends on your level of skill and stakes that you play with. Check out the top HUDs compared on Beating Betting to see which might best suit your game.

Are They A Cowboy Or A Coward?

Sometimes it’s as simple as knowing how bold a player is. Many players always tend to err on the side of caution where others are bold and bullying. You can get to know these traits if you’ve played with a player before or regularly. On many online sites you can make ‘friends’ with other users as you come across them, and this could be particularly useful, I would recommend ‘befriending’ as many as possible as this way you can play them time and again and learn their behaviours and traits.

Play The Percentages Not The Player?

With all the talk of reading your opponent and trying to get a hand on what they are doing it’s often forgotten that the game of poker is a game of chance and therefore there are mathematical odds that you can calculate your chances of winning any hand given the cards you hold and what stage of the hand you are at. An experienced player will have a learned and almost instinctive feel for what these are. But you can learn this, use an odds calculator and play rounds of dummy hands to fine hone your feelings on these.

Or Concentrate On Your Own Game

Finally, there is only so much you can tell from an opponent and sometimes it pays more just to concentrate on your own game. Even remembering that they will be trying to suss out what you are up to as well, and doing what they can to read your own tells. It’s important to mix up your strategies to avoid becoming too predictable yourself as well.