Body language displayed while playing poker is known as “tells” quite simply because what you are doing with your hands, your eyes, your body, can tell your opponent what kind of hand you have. This is something you don’t want them to know and this is often why poker players wear sunglasses, or peaked hats. They don’t want you to look into their eyes and see what they hold in their hand.

But it goes deeper then the eyes, tells in the angle of the head, if the feet are tapping, the slant of the shoulders. All these tells need to be read. So you say to yourself, that’s ok – when I play online poker, no other player can read, my body language, they are blind to my tells. This is not so, poker is a game of skill and strategy, it is played by very intelligent men and women and there are even familiar tells in online poker which you need to learn to read and not to display.

Although there are no bodies to betray the players’ thoughts, there are still actions which take place that do. You don’t want to inadvertently betray any information to your opponent and give them an advantage; to take care of online tells, you don’t have to be seen for these to take place.

A tell is obviously useful information and these were seen even in the cave-man days of online poker, which if you remember that far back, was actually at the turn of the century. “The Stall” is one of the most obvious and predictable of tells and it is also one of the easiest to exploit. Back then an inexperienced player would stall if they had a powerful hand. Today, experienced players use this as a bluff to make you believe that they have a strong hand, so it is not so easy to read.

The value in a stall lies when a break from a normal betting pattern takes place. If you are observant enough the stall allows you to see alterations from normal behavior and this should ring warning bells. Learning about these warning bells and speaking the language of online poker is vitally important if you are determined to take your poker playing seriously, and it means analyzing betting patterns.
In the majority online poker players are regular, and play in the same league games that you do. This is important to realize, beginners stick to beginners games and you stick your level of play or up the ante a little.

Online poker players get into habits or rhythms of play too – at least a lot of regular player do and this involves the size and speed of bets, calls or raises. These rhythms become exploitable and if you are a step ahead it becomes simple to spot deviations.
Also check out the “Rant”, the “Gloat”, the “Whiner”, the “Rocket Scientist” and other tells. Many players have carried over telling traits from playing casino or even garage poker and these can be exploited – learn how.