If you can't spot the sucker within the first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker.
-- Common poker saying, as spoken by Matt Damon in Rounders and originally attributed to Amarillo Slim
In live games, reading your opponents is much easier than it is online. Professionals wear sunglasses to hide any trace of emotion in their eyes. They bring I-pods and portable CD players to listen to and minimize distractions. They spend countless hours looking for tell-tale signs of a player’s strengths and weaknesses.
When you play online, you don’t have the advantage of looking into the other players’ eyes to get a read on their cards. This makes moves like bluffing significantly more precarious. It can be done, and we’ll cover that in a separate section, but you can also get some tells from your fellow players in the online poker room.
Several of the tells listed here are useful in both online and offline poker. However, since we lack the ability to read opponents’ physical expressions, these are the tells that are available to us making them that much more important.
First, let us define a “tell.” A “tell” is a habitual action by another player that gives you a clue as to what he is holding. In offline poker, a widening of the eyes is often a “tell” of a very strong hand. That is one reason you see so many poker players wearing sunglasses at the table. It’s not because of the bright Las Vegas lights.
Let’s take a look at some of the tells that are exhibited by online players and what they mean.
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