Poker Strategy Lesson - Reading Online Poker Opponents :

Poker tells come in various ways and while online poker doesn’t include physical tells, there are still indicators you can pick up on. Below are suggested actions you can take to enhance your ability to read poker players. The ability to read opponents is the most critical factor of solid poker strategy.

What is the Poker Table Mood?

When you join a table, make sure you bring the maximum buy-in amount. This is important because you don’t want to come in as a short stack. Be very conservative at first. Getting a read on an opponent doesn’t happen in 5 seconds. Your first goal should be to identify the general table mood: Are players generally tight, aggressive, looking to get a lot of cheap flops? It’s important for you to understand the setting because your chosen poker strategy should always be based on a reaction to your environment. How you play poker depends on how they play poker! Never come in at a table thinking you’re going to play a certain way. Forget about developing your “personal style” because that will actually limit you in the long term. Showing flexibility and adaptability to your surroundings will make you much more effective.

Assessing Poker Opponents

Once you gather information about the table mood, keep an eye on it because this can change over time. When chip stacks of opponents increase/decrease or when players leave and new ones join, the table mood could shift. The next step is to identify a general profile for each opponent. Don’t over complicate things. Just brand them as “aggressive” or “tight” for now. How can you figure this out? By watching them play. Someone who’s involved in a lot of hands is more aggressive than someone who folds a lot of starting hands for instance. Someone who raises a lot, or reraises a lot is very aggressive. Someone who folds a lot when facing a raise is tight, etc.

Looking for Poker Patterns

A lot of poker players tend to play the same way when faced with specific conditions. Just think about how you play your own AK starting hand when you get it. You probably have a little standard approach such as raising in early position, slow playing in later position if there’s just a few opponents, etc. Whatever your own pattern is, you probably make a lot of decisions based on table position and number of opponents in the hand. Guess what, you are not alone! Paying attention to table position of opponents when you study their style is certainly a good way to start. At this point, you have a general idea of how opponents tend to behave, see if you can pinpoint clearer patterns based on table position and other conditions. For example, and aggressive player in the big blind position will often raise when facing a few limpers who want to get a cheap flop. That’s because they probably want to take down the pot now since everyone is being shy about betting. If they do this regularly, then you know that you can potentially trap them when you get a monster hand simply by calling the minimum bet. They’ll likely raise, others will likely fold as a result, and depending on the strength of your hand and your own level of “acceptable risk”, you might choose to call or to reraise. Your own table image and table position should be factored in this decision, in addition to your hand strength. There’s all kinds of patterns like this you can look out for, and then take advantage of when an opportunity arises.

The Payoff

Since you started by playing tight and took some time to analyze your surroundings, you probably have a conservative image, and your stack is probably down just a tiny bit. That’s OK, now is the time to capitalize on your read before the mood changes significantly again, at which point you may have to redo this process, or parts of it. Look for opportunities where you see patterns, where you can predict how a player will act before they do, and take the appropriate action to “counter” the expected play, or to maximize your profit.

Raising = More Information

Remember that one of the most effective ways to get a read in a given hand is to raise. If things don’t play out as you expected and you are unsure about where you stand in the hand, a raise might just provide you the information you need about either your own hand strength, the strength of your opponent’s hand, or both. If you sense weakness in your opponents, you should try to take the pot down by making them fold, assuming you have a weak hand yourself. If you have a strong hand, you don’t want them to fold unless the board cards pose a risk. In low risk situations, try to slow play and tempt them into bluffing. In higher risk situations, raise and take the pot down now before you get in trouble. Good luck!