Online Poker Player Tracking

Poker tells are the heart of the people game in poker. To be successful, you must develop the skill of reading both obvious and subtle nonverbal cues exhibited by other players at the table. Being able to judge poker tells will greatly influence your betting decisions, protect your bankroll, and boost your winnings.

Knowing how to recognize a good hand of cards in poker is not enough if you want to become a winning poker player. Being able to judge your opponents’ hands is of equal importance. Almost every player has revealing tells that give away his or her excitement, worry, indifference and so forth. When you enter a poker game you need to continually observe the other players. A critical technique is to watch them when they are NOT participating in a hand. This will help you know what normal is for them when they are free of the mental and emotional work that goes into betting a hand. When you have a good idea of what normal is for someone, then their physical mannerisms, expressions, and quirks that could be poker tells will pop out for you more easily. This process especially begins to bear fruit when you regularly play at the same poker venue and you know many of the players. Of course, your more worthy opponents will be watching you too and you need to craft an even-keeled poker persona.

Although good players try to hide their tells or mislead their opponents, it is very difficult for any person to suppress all nonverbal communication. You might think you can put on a face that makes it difficult to determine what you are thinking, but can you hide what you are feeling? Even buried emotions can surface through nonverbal communication with the movement of eyes, lips, hands, posture, etc. To develop your poker persona, work on behaving the same whether you are in a hand or not. Be mindful of the way you act. If you are quiet and don’t use a lot of hand gestures, then maintain this when you participate in betting. Or, if you are a more outgoing personality, try to maintain your normal level of animation during betting instead of becoming abnormally still and focused. As you get better at monitoring yourself for poker tells, you can gradually become more artful with your performances and manipulate others.

Winning at poker requires a marriage of knowing when to play your cards and determining what your opponents’ are holding. Noticing poker tells is an important part of being able to read the probable value of the other players’ cards. This information will let you know when to bet and when to fold. It’s easy for beginning poker players to focus solely on their cards and not spend enough time studying the other people at the table. Poker is a mental combat just as much as it is a technical game.

For more tips on improving your poker game and detailed advice about selecting winning hands, using your table position, and money management read the free guide Situational Poker published at http://www.poker-situations.com