Poker player holding ace with flying cards – Pexels
The world of poker has always rewarded a very specific skill: the ability to hide your feelings and keep your face blank (or possibly misleading). Picture the typical poker table: it’s surrounded by individuals holding their cards close to their chests and watching each other intently for the tiniest of signals. The twitch of a lip, a double blink, a head tilt. When you know somebody even a little, these small signals can serve as tells as to what’s going through their heads.
Poker players have been using these cues for centuries. A good poker player will often read tells subconsciously, tilting their own gameplay to match the tiny fragments of information they get about their opponents’ hands simply by being good at reading their body language.
And at the same time, many good poker players have spent decades learning to keep their own expressions blank. It’s such an integral part of the game that we have coined a very famous phrase – the poker face – based on exactly this dynamic. There’s little question that if you’re someone who wears their heart on their sleeve, you’re not going to thrive at an experienced poker table. You’ll simply give away too much to be able to take advantage of bluffing.
But in today’s world, that doesn’t mean poker is unavailable to you. It simply means you might need to engage with it in a different way.
Online Poker: A Haven For Those With Tells
If you want to play this classic game but you’re worried about your ability to hide your expressions, have you ever tried to play poker online? This changes the dynamics so much that it’s almost like a totally different game, and for those who find it hard to keep their feelings to themselves, it’s an absolute haven.
Before we go deeper into this, we should express a caveat. When you play poker online, tells aren’t completely eliminated. Savvy players will still be watching like hawks for patterns in your behavior. Do you hesitate before bluffing? Do you always raise in certain situations? Do you play fast when you’re sure of your hand?
There’s definitely still psychology and pattern reading when you choose to play poker online (and let’s face it, if there wasn’t, this game would be a lot more boring). However, it’s a completely different world, and you’re under a lot less pressure to control your face.
You can grin when a good card comes your way. You can roll your eyes when you get your fifth bad card in a row. You can sigh or fold your arms or punch the air in victory. None of these things matter because you’re hidden behind a screen and your opponents will be none the wiser.
That makes online poker a perfect setup for players who want to enjoy this game but feel frustrated and self-conscious when they can’t hide their expressions easily – which may be a particular problem for younger players. Instead, you can focus on eliminating the subtler tells (patterns in your betting behavior, playing speed, etc.), and forget about what your face is doing.
For some people, that massively elevates the enjoyment this kind of game can offer. If you love poker but you just find yourself self-conscious and anxious when you sit at a physical table, digital poker could be perfect.
Another key reason that playing online can help if you’re not good at hiding your cues – including the subtle ones that are still visible when you play online – is that you can end up against a much greater variety of opponents. This makes it harder for people to learn your particular cues, which can reduce the impact they have on your games.
How To Reduce Online Tells
Of course, it’s still worth learning how to eliminate your tells when you’re playing online. After all, who wouldn’t want to get better at poker, even if you want to ditch the complexity of schooling your expressions?
The first step of eliminating tells is to figure out what your tells are. You’ve got a few options here. You might decide to strike up a conversation with some of your opponents and, once a rapport has been established, ask them what they’ve noticed. Some won’t want to say, but others will be more than willing to help you in your quest to improve and will give you honest feedback about where you’re giving things away.
Another option is to record your games and watch them again later. Look for patterns. Are you hesitating when your cards are bad? Are you overly eager when you’re bluffing? Are you trying to build in deceptive pauses and accidentally introducing a tell because you’re doing so in predictable ways?
Whatever it is, analyzing your behavior like this will give you insight. It will also make you better at reading other players, which will give you a stronger edge in games. Yes, this sort of work takes time and energy… but the outcome will enhance your skills and understanding, making you a stronger poker player. Don’t dismiss the value of tells in the online world, but do enjoy being able to relax your expression and vocalize over your cards without worrying about tipping off your opponents!
You might also find it useful to learn about the types of poker players out there – Ignition Casino recently released a funny video positing that there are 4 kinds, and learning about them can be a great way to take your game to the next level, as well as learning more about yourself and where you fit.
