Online Tells (a bunch of hooey?)

[ElAnimal]

Crunchy1 made me think about this in a recent post.

How many of you let online tells influence your decisions at small stakes tables? Why, why not, and under what circumstances?

The only online tells I know of are related to how much time a given player takes to make a decision.

Personally, if the opponent plays even remotely well, I totally disregard "tells" as they could be a result of multitabling or done purposefully to throw me off. But if the player is extremely bad (like VPIP in the 60%+ range over at least a few orbits) and I see an obvious pattern, I'll take it into consideration. I think I run into what I'd call a legitimate tell maybe about once every 5,000 -10,000 hands or so, so they're not really significant to me. I'm mostly just curious.

[ihardlyknowher]

The EV gained from picking up these "tells", even if there is a pattern, could be far exceeded by adding another table and not having the mental cost of trying to watch for them.

[mtdoak]

I think there are really too many unknowns to really have any true online tells. A guy who waits 5 seconds before he calls might just have disconnected or maybe his dog just ripped up a pillow. The only thing I have found of use is when people use the 'call any' button (i.e. calls with zero delay), they usually have a strong draw such as a flush or OESD or an already made hand.

[VoraciousReader]

If a check/call/raise is instantaneous (preaction button) I will lean toward assuming the hand is weak/strong/very strong.

If someone folds when they could have checked (which I see at least once a day on average) I pretty much assume that they have almost no understanding of the game (or can't work a mouse).

Other than that I don't use tells online.

Edit: If I'm playing in a tournament, I always fold to the players who say: "I'm going all-in this hand. I have to go." I guess that counts as a tell.

[Harv72b]

I don't dispute that you can likely make more money by adding a table or two than you can by picking up on tells online, but they are there. I do use them. I do profit from them.

And it's not just about the amount of time they take before making a decision. There's also the betting pattern (some people make their draws painfully obvious; others are constantly playing into the "weak is strong, strong is weak" cliche). There's chatter going on in the chatbox; some people will tip off their hand in chat, even if it's by being totally silent when they were just chatting up a storm. And this has been debated to death, but I do think you can often pick up something about a player's skill level from their screenname.

Oh, and of course there's the guy who buys in for 5 BBs, posts in EP, and immediately raises. He is always doing that with any 2 cards. Every single time. Law of averages says that every so often he really is going to have a premium hand, but for the most part you can go to showdown with any hand worth seeing the flop with.

It gets even more detailed when you're playing NL, but that's another forum. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[SL__72]

I haven't played all that much online yet... but so far it seems like people are more likely to fold to my bets if they are instant (when I use the preaction button)... Anyway the few times I've tried this on the river its resulted in a fold, but again, the sample size on this is tiny.

[crunchy1]

IMO, there are two categories of what I call "Online Timing Tells". Stall tells and Auto-Action Tells

A large concern is do they really occur frequently enough to be reliable. You've kind of pointed out already that this likely isn't the case. Furthermore, a stall for one player may mean something else for a second player.

Also, a stall for one player may mean one thing in situation A and the complete opposite in situation B.

<font color="green">The first category is stall tells.</font>

A stall tell being when a player takes an inordinate amount of time to make his decision. As has already been pointed out this may occur for a variety of factors. Bathroom breaks, yelling wifes, screaming kids, pooping dogs all could contribute to a false positive. This doesn't even take into account the fact that your computer, as well as the computers of every other player in the game, is connected through hundreds, if not thousands, of network devices that you have no control over or knowledge of their current state of functionality. A simple routing/re-routing issue could again cause the lag which would provide a false positive tell.

Personally, I put no stock whatsoever in stall tells - there's just too much variance in exactly what they mean.

<font color="green">The second category is Auto-Bet Tells:</font>

The following is specific to the Party Network (although I'm sure similiarities exist on other sites as well):

A problem with using timing tells is the array of buttons available to us.

First there is the [fold] button. This button is probably one of the two possibly reliable tells available to us. If they auto-fold it's pretty obvious as the hand is gone instantly. Unfortunately, they're now out of the hand so a tell from this button really doesn't help us much.

Next there is the [check/fold] button. This button is unreliable. It's impossible to tell whether the opponent actually had the [fold] or [Fold to any bet] button pressed or the [check] button pressed (which would not fold if there was a bet or raise prior to opponent's action).

Next is the [check] button. Again for the same reasons listed above it's impossible to tell if a check was an auto-check or and auto-check/fold. An opponent could use this to slow-play if it's checked to him but, then take a different line if action occurs on his/her right.

After that comes the [check/call] button. A tell off this button seems both unreliable and useless. A check could've been the check button with the intention of doing something different had there been a bet. An auto-call could mean many different things from a draw to a made hand that is slow-playing. I don't see any reliable way to tell (pun intended) the difference.

Then there is the [bet] button. Again unreliable as it could've been the auto-bet/raise button that did the work here. It's an unreliable tell of how much Villian actually likes his hand. This allows an opponent to auto-bet if it's checked to them but, take a different course of action if a bet is made by a previous opponent. On the other hand, they may have been intending to raise any bet to them (with the auto-bet/raise button) if it's actually been checked.

Last is the [auto-bet/raise any] button. I think it's typically pretty obvious when a villian uses makes an auto-raise. Though we should note that an auto-bet may also have been an auto-raise depending on the action prior to said Villian.

You should realize however, that although some of these auto-action buttons can seem to have a few somewhat reliable tells - false positives can still occur. One example is when there is a network problem on your end.

Say, for example, that you check and a network issue arises as player 2 bets and player 3 "appears" to auto-raise. By the time your end of the network is resolved this action appears to have occurred although it could very likely be that player2 auto-checked and player3 took some time before he/she bet. Your network problem was transparent to you and by the time it was resolved the actions of the next two opponents appeared to be instantaneous.


Hope this makes sense and helps.

[CashFlo]

personally, I totally disregard tells in online poker.

I myself stall or make instantaneous decisions to throw others off.

[crunchy1]

bump!

[SmileyEH]

I use timing tells, but thats probably obvious. Didn't notice this thread when I created the poll.

-SmileyEH