Poker: Folding Out Of Turn, Online Tells, and Betting Patterns
For poker is YOUR game...
THE PHANTOM FOLDER Following up on my piece about betting out of turn and the accompanying penalties I thought I should probably make it clear what happens when a player in a social or professional “live” game folds out of turn. Let’s assume there are two players yet to act ahead of the offender who folds out of turn. In this situation the illegal player is compelled to put in enough chips to “call” any raise made by those preceding players. Even when he does this he will still be ruled as having folded. In a scenario where the intervening players fold or call, the offending player’s out of turn fold will be allowed to stand and he will face no sanction as no damage has effectively been caused. The major protection against any kind of “out of turn” action, whether it be a premature fold or an over-eager, ill-timed bet, is to play online. The software simply won’t allow this kind of error to take place. Yet another victory for technology over human frailty.
ONLINE TELLS Obviously spotting online “tells” is a lot more challenging than a physical social game where you have all kinds of facial expressions and body language signals giving off a variety of information.
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BETTING PATTERNS The “online tells” I look for are betting patterns. Nine times out of ten these will reveal most of what you need to know about an opposing player. Let’s say you’re in a $2-4 No Limit Hold’em game. Keep a careful track of pre-flop raises and post-flop bets. I’ll give you an example of an actual game. The opposing player makes a pre-flop fifteen dollar raise and eventually turns over ten-nine suited. A little later he raises forty dollars pre-flop on what turns out to be pocket Queens. A few hands on and he raises pre-flop twenty five bucks on what turns out to be pocket Kings. Eventually his formula reveals itself. When he has a premium pocket pair (Aces or Kings) he raises twenty five dollars pre-flop in order to pull in one or two callers. If he has Queens-Jacks or Tens he goes with forty bucks or fifty bucks pre-flop because he doesn’t want to see a flop with these hands. His only motive is to steal the blinds. Forced to see the flop, he only wants one caller if possible. His ten or fifteen dollar raises are simply pot builders if he’s holding something with potential like nine-ten or King-Queen. Eventually you get a “read out” on this guy’s approach to poker. These are long term “tells” which require you to make notes but they will usually bring dividends that make it worthwhile.
