A vital part of any good poker strategy is learning to read poker players at the table. That is why you always hear so much about poker tells. These “tells” are any physical reaction, type of behaviour or habit that give the other poker players information about your hand.
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If you learn to recognize the common poker tells, you can not only watch your own behaviour to make sure your body language isn’t revealing your secrets, but also watch for the habits and tics of your opponents so that you can make the right decisions when playing against them.
Every single poker player has his/her own unique set of tells and it is great to watch individuals to really learn to read poker players. Luckily, there are also a few involuntary and quite common poker tells that you can watch for the very first time you sit down with a new opponent. As a general rule: remember that when a player acts strong he is probably weak, and when a player acts weak he probably has a strong poker hand.
Poker tells that announce a good poker hand include: acting uninterested in a hand while still playing in it, very shaky hands, rapid breathing, sighing and shrugging, and glancing at chips after looking at their hole cards. On the other hand, poker tells that give away a weak poker hand include staring down the other poker players and holding his/her breath.
An opponent might have a drawing hand if they check their hole cards after the flop or take a long time to call a bet. If the flop shows the possibility of someone reaching for a flush or a straight, watch for poker players that are re-checking their hold cards. They are checking because they got a piece of the flop, but have not made the nuts yet. By checking, your opponent is hoping to make that drawing hand. Contrarily, if a poker player takes a long time before calling a bet, looking at the pot for indeterminable amounts of time, they are likely doing some calculating in their head. Your opponent is trying to figure out the pot odds to see if it is worth putting more money in the pot to complete his/her drawing hand.
Be weary, the poker strategy of a more experience poker player will no doubt include giving off false tells. So before you even attempt to read poker players for any of the poker tells above, first read them to find out if they are novices or pros.
