how do you read a long pause before a bet or raise

[huge]

If someone who normally acts quickly pauses a long time (maybe eating into their time clock at PS) and then throws out a big bet or raise, and you've never seen them do this before, do you

A) pay no attention to it - might be internet lag, phone call, whatever

B) tighten up a bit - might be trying to play weak with a monster

C) loosen up a bit - might be pausing to evaluate a bluff


I'm mostly interested in the situation where you don't have much of a read on your opponent. But if you do have an evaluation of him/her (but not related to this play) how would that factor in? I'll go out on a limb and say that I read a long pause from a hyper-aggressive player as a possible monster, and a long pause from a smart solid player as a possible bluff against an observant opponent. I'm not going to put a ton of weight on this, but I factor it in a bit.

Conversely, how effective do you think it is to use a long pause, perhaps once per tournament, against people who you haven't played with a lot (or who you think are not observant enough to have noticed you doing it before)? I'm inclined to do it once in a while on a bluff, but I have no idea of whether it helps me or not.

-Huge

[fnurt]

I would view a long pause as something like 80% irrelevant, and 20% a good hand trying to be cute.

I'm not a big fan of using extra acting to enhance a bluff, either live or online. The fact is, as the very existence of this post acknowledges, a long pause is suspicious. Why would you want to make your opponent suspicious when you're bluffing?

[AA suited]

if it was me that paused, then i was busy at another table because i was multitabling. and at that other table i flopped a monster and it required my full attention to squeeze the most $ from it.

nothing like quad 7's on the flop [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[nolanfan34]

[ QUOTE ]
if it was me that paused, then i was busy at another table because i was multitabling.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is what I always think of first when someone unexpectedly pauses. If someone is bluffing, it always seems to me that they get their chips in as fast as possible.

Internet lag usually is a culprit as well for me, since I'm on dialup.

[huge]

You may well be right. All I can try to guess is whether a pause will make it slightly more or less likely that an opponent will call my bluff. I'm inclined to think that people who haven't seen me do it before wil be (as you are) slightly more likely to think I'm getting cute with a monster.

I think I totally agree with you about not "acting" with a bluff in Limit, but in No-Limit I guess I think acting might have its place.

But I'm still very much up in the air about this, and I certainly don't do it very often.

-L

[ZootMurph]

I don't read anything into a pause unless I've noticed a specific read in it on this player several times. I'm like AAsuited and am usually multitabling as well.

However, in the later stages of tournament play, I will specifically try to throw out a 'read' to a good player so I can use it against that player later.

[fnurt]

Ok, but if you assume most people will think like me, you should also assume people will not vary their play based upon the pause, cause I sure don't. I might mutter "Hollywood" to myself but I will still take my normal action, because 80% of the time the pause means nothing more than multitabling.

Picking up on tells is one thing, but with respect to deliberate acting by your opponent, Bob Ciaffone said it best: any time you let your opponent's extraneous actions lead you to do something different than what you normally would, you give him what he wants.

To look at it from the other side, there are two types of players you might use an intentional pause against: unaware players and aware ones. Unaware players presumably think a pause indicates weakness and will call you down. Aware players are probably suspicious of this "weak means strong" tell and possibly might be more inclined to fold. But I don't think you can blithely assume your opponent fits into one category or the other without knowing more.

[shejk]

The way I see it, it probably isn't much use trying to read something into an opponent's (probably unintentional) sudden pause. Besides that most of the time it won't mean anything, I would need a very good read to be able to put him on "I want him to bluff" instead of the opposite or whichever.

Conclusion on the first part: Don't bother about whether your opponent makes a pause.

On the other hand, I use pauses quite frequently. I play lowlimit internet poker, mostly on multipoker, and I am under the impression that my opponents often look for a reason to call. A pause might be enough of an excuse for a weak opponent to think: "Wait, he *might* be bluffing, I'd better call him down".

This play gets even better when you feign weakness with it as a slowplay. For example pause before call on flop, to induce a bluff on turn/river.

Opinions?