No matter where you play poker, you always end up thinking ”what the heck does he have?”. It doesn’t matter if you play live or online, for 10$ or for 10,000$. You always got to think it. If you’re wondering how Patrik Antonius knows what the player on 300$/600$-table has, let me explain it to you. It happens simply by catching tells. Tells are the purpose of the whole poker, that’s the reason why some players don’t appreciate online-games – they take a whole amount of skill off the game.

Nevertheless, there are some tells you can catch when you play online, not impossible at all. After you have started your poker career by depositing 30$ to your bank account, you go to the low-limit tables. Now, I want to make clear that when you’re a little more experienced player, these low-limit games become almost impossible for you. That’s just because it seems so clear to you what these players are doing that you can’t believe it.

 

To help all of you realize this thing, I’ll tell you a little bit how it goes at certain levels:

Fishes: These players are the ones who play on the most lowest limits – and manage to lose. They of course have the wrong style to think about the game, they think only their cards, now let’s get to the next level.

Amateurs: I like to call these players as “amateurs” just because they have a little idea of the game, but not really a decent one. Their thinking has developed to the next level, “what the other one has”.

Semi-fisher: Ok, now we can already make a little profit. We’ve learned to think about what he thinks I have. Your game has just developed to the next level!

Fisher: This guy can do quite good profit by playing poker. He wins the fishes easily, and is still on the level where he understands their game. He thinks “what does he think I think he has”. This is pretty good already.

Poker-pro: Ok, now we make our living from poker, and we got some money left for partying and some nice clothes. We can’t understand the fishes anymore. We think what he thinks I think he thinks I have. Wow, feels great to be this good!

The PokerStar: The truth is, I can’t tell their thinking, if I knew I’d probably beat them everyday. Maybe their thinking is continuing that “poem” I’m making all the time. Now we’re making millions of dollars a year from poker and all the marketing deals.

I hope you’re not thinking that it really is that simple – of course not! But I think it gives a pretty good picture of how their game is developing all the time, and how it needs to develop. Your thinking needs to go on all the time, and now we’re back to where I started. When you’re doing the thinking process, you need to think about the tells, and make the decision from them.

 

On the lowest limits people do easily clear overbets when they try to scare the other one out of the pot. This won’t work for the good players. When you go to the next level you find out that now they’re doing overbets for purpose. They do them to make you think they have done an overbet, and they flip over the nuts. It gets more complicated all the time when you go further, and then it starts to matter how this player has acted before in the same position, or some other position where you have gotten some clues from him. These are the places where showing your cards does matter.

 

Ok, other obvious tell would be the right places to bet, if he’s just checking after you all the hand until the river, ok it’s possible that he hit something but even bigger possibility that he didn’t. If you got an ace on your hand calling would be a good decision. Again, when you go further on the levels, they check just to make you believe they have nothing, and then on the river they make it again look like an overbet and they flip over the nuts. Not nice.

And if I’d have to give one more obvious tell right now, it would be timing, simply the time that they take to make decisions. But really this works only on the biggest fishes. When you’re on the bigger levels, it doesn’t matter so much what time does he take for it, they can hide it really good. But the time matter will eventually help you when you sum all of his actions up in your head, or in the hand history. Also, remember when you make your decisions, try to use your instincts. I remember when I was starting up and getting better, I had the right idea in the back of my head, but wasn’t smart enough to follow it. It actually surprised me how much I did things against it just to prove my instincts wrong, which was stupid but I’ve learned from it now and so should you!

 

Basically catching tells is the whole trick. When you get better in catching tells, also called reading players, you’ll get much better in poker. On the side of the probabilities, reading players is the other half of poker. Handle them both well and you’ll be a very good poker player, maybe even better than a “fisher” ?
in catching tells, also called reading players, you’ll get much better in poker. On the side of the probabilities, reading players is the other half of poker. Handle them both well and you’ll be a very good poker player, maybe even better than a “fisher” ?