While Waiting Poker Tells

Pick the Opener

One thing you should always be looking out for is when players are waiting for you to act. Their body language and posture are very important. You always need to be looking out for players who might be strong before you bet into them.

When are you waiting for your turn to act, one good thing to pick up on is who you feel is going to open. You can do this by examining each player and use the tells mentioned earlier. What you want to look out for most is someone who looks at their cards, instantly puts them down, and then looks uninterested. This is almost always an indication that they will be opening.

Pick the Raiser

If you are in a multi-way pot, a very important concept you must do is to pick out the threat. If you are betting into two or more opponents, you need to examine each player for tells to see who might have a hand and who might not. Players staring at your are usually less of a threat than players staring away.

Play or Pass

If you ever notice a player who is waiting for you to act make a notion that he is going to fold, beware. Noticing this might be very difficult at first, as it might look like he is just looking at his hand. However, you want to look for him to make a move away from him with his cards, because this is probably him trying to lure your bet. Now this isn’t the case all the time (as with all tells) because there could be a bad player to your left that doesn’t pay enough attention and always does a certain action before he will fold. But this is something you might see an aware player do in order to lure a bet from you.

Turning the Hand Over

As stated above, don’t fall for the subtle motion that a player makes where it looks like they are going to fold. Most of the time, they will be raising instead of folding. Caro reminds us, “there is no reason for any player to give you information out of turn, and they never do unless it is bad information.”

Turning Too Soon

In the same area, if an opponent ever makes a bet, then starts to turn up his hands too soon, it is probably a bluff trying to get you to fold. Now this sometimes may be a bad player who is excited to get paid off, but one of Caro’s laws is, “When a player acts to spread his hand prematurely, it’s usually because he’s bluffing.”

Will They Play?

One thing to also take note on, is who you feel is going to play before the action gets to them. As stated many times, you want to look for the player who looks uninterested, because most of the time, he really is. Also, if a player is staring you down and making a notion towards his chips, he most likely will be folding.