Online Poker » Offline Poker Advice

If you have been playing online poker mainly and you start to play with friends or at real life tournaments you have to be careful because you won’t be used to offline play and the different tells that people have. If you haven’t played with any of the players before you won’t have any idea what their personal tells are and so you have to go off of the general physical tells that many people have.

The best tell for offline play is to watch players’ eyes. There is a reason many of the pros wear sunglasses or visors/hats that cover their eyes. They know that the eyes don’t usually lie. It is important to keep your eyes on your opponents’ eyes because players tend to stare longer at a really good hand when they’re dealt it and often players ask you about your hand because they know it is hard to look someone straight in the eyes if they’re lying.

Also, along the lines of watching a player’s eyes, if you see a player look at their chips after the flop or turn or river, it might mean they have hit a good hand. It is subconscious but it shows that they are already planning their attack. If you see a player looking at their two cards after a flop that shows a 3 card flush then you can safely assume that they are checking if their cards have those suits. Often it means they remember only that the cards are different suits, meaning they haven’t hit the flush yet.

Watching facial expressions and body language is also important because although all players try to hide it when they have a good hand their face and body often show more confidence than when they have a weak hand. Along those same lines, once you have played with someone for a long period of time you can pick up tells for that person that no one else might have. It could be something like the way they sit, where they look, etc.

Anxiety can do a lot of thins to a poker player. When they get nervous it is common to see things such as a dry throat and a lot of swallowing, or a higher heart rate which can be detected by heavier breathing or by large veins in your head be more readily noticeable. Also, trembling hands can be a sign that someone is nervous because they have a big hand or have just made a huge bluff.

Offline play is very different to that of online play and you have to know which hands are strong and how to play them. Using your knowledge of tells you can try to trap using your body posture or the way you talk or make a bet. Showing no confidence is a good way to get raised or called, and vice versa. One of the more important things to remember is that these tells are ones that most decent players know of and will play to as well. So, if you are playing with people who are just starting you can pay more attention to these tells than if you are playing with people who take poker seriously and play every week.

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 17th, 2006 at 10:14 am and is filed under Poker Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.