What Online Poker's Auto-Buttons Reveal About Your Opponents
Make sure YOU aren't auto-posting to an auto-pasting.... (does that even make sense? I'm not sure, but what the hell, I had to put something here!)
ONLINE TELLS FOLLOW UP I touched briefly on “online poker tells” with yesterday’s Tip of the Day. I was making the point that a player who habitually hits the “Raise Any in Turn” button with the “goods” and regularly hits “Fold/Check in Turn” with rubbish cards is giving off easy-to-read signals. Let’s look at this in sharper focus. When the player in question acts ahead of you your brain will already be alerted and ninety percent of the time you’ll know precisely what his pre-clicked bets are indicating. If the enemy hits “Raise Any in Turn” and you don’t have a beefed up hand, your signal is to fold. If he auto-checks ahead of you when you’re heads up and you’re holding nothing exciting you can read this “tell” and risk a bet just big enough to steal the pot from him. People are always complaining that tells are much more difficult to spot during online play than they are when you’re in a live game. I think it’s more a question of developing what I call an “instinct upgrade”. Players transfer their habits to online play and those habits simply come through the online medium as different signals. After a while the speed at which online play takes place, by its very nature, tends to trap less experienced players into patterns of play just by the pressure of momentum. Your task is to shake your own play patterns up regularly but to watch like a hawk for them developing in the opposition.
WHAT’S IN THE POST? Auto-posting is an important part of the online game and coming to grips with how people use it will add extra edge to your game. For example when an opposing player fails to auto-post it can only mean they are either a poker virgin or a street-wise shark. The shark has probably just dropped in for a couple of games to see what he or she can mop up. So be alert. Sharks are obviously most dangerous in these situations if you’re playing no-limit. If a player who has been using auto-posting all evening suddenly stops doing so you can be fairly sure they are thinking about calling it a night. Now this is a player you want to focus on, especially if he or she has been winning. The likelihood is they’re going to be playing very tight for their last game or two, not wanting to lose what they’ve spent all evening accumulating. How is this helpful? Simple. If they start raising and getting fully engaged with what may well be their last game you can be pretty damn sure they’ve landed the majority of a nut hand. Fold if you don’t have a crusher of your own.
WHAT IS THE MAIN FUNCTION OF AUTO-POSTING? Basically auto-posting is a software user service which enables you to pre-post your blinds and ante bets. It also allows games to be carried on at a much faster pace and for that reason it’s very popular with regular players. Get to grips with it.
