WATCH OUT - THE SCREEN HAS EARS!
Any successful pro will tell you that a large part of their game is picking up on and then exploiting tells and other bits and pieces of information that players give off around a poker table. In fact players who are very adept at this can even achieve success in poker despite some of them having serious technical flaws in their games. But what happens when they then transfer to online play, surely you cannot pick up tells and such in this kind of environment right......wrong!!
If you think that online poker wipes out this particular avenue of the game then you are way off the mark, plain and simple. The truth is that there is much information to be gleaned from the screen and further information can be extracted deliberately by use of “chatbox trash talk”.
I play professionally mainly online and that essentially means taking any and every little edge that I can lay my hands on. In some games where most of the players have decent skill sets then this can be your only edge. I pride myself in being professional and this means never playing when I am tired or disturbed for any reason but that certainly is not the case for the vast majority of other players
I recall one instance in a $40-$80 limit Hold’em game where I actually got a player to lay down the winning hand because of something that I typed into the chatbox. I had the J-10 of spades on the button and three players had limped in and I limped as well. We had a six way pot with the two blinds joining us and $240 in the pot at that stage. The flop came J-10-6 giving me the top two pair and the probable best hand.
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This would create the thought of a straight in their mind and could possibly induce a fold. There was nearly $700 in this pot at this stage so a raise was only costing me $160 so I was getting almost 4-1 on my play to try and induce a fold and fold they did.
I generally play most of my online poker in the early morning between 6:00am-11:00am. As I live in the UK, this gives me an edge on certain sites that are predominantly occupied by Americans for instance who will be playing in the wee small hours over there and are unlikely to be fresh and playing their best poker.
Whenever I play, I always have the chatbox turned on so I can see what is being said or not being said whichever is the case. I know one fellow online pro who never has this turned on and they are making a mistake in my opinion. Even if you are not actively participating in the chat yourself, there is much to be learned from listening to other people.
For instance, if you see two players carrying on an intense conversation that has nothing to do with poker whatsoever then it is safe to assume that these are not serious players and are merely playing recreationally...they may even be friends who know each other and are merely using the chat function as a kind of cheap phone call. People play poker for many different reasons but the pro’s are essentially playing for money and if they get involved in conversation then it is for a reason.
Most of the time, I am far too busy watching the betting tendencies of the other players to get too involved in chatbox tactics. But whenever I am playing no-limit, I sometimes like to mess with the other players heads a little bit.
I tend to find that there is less chat in the no-limit games because the players take the game more seriously. When the players are not chatting at all then that is also a tell, it means that they have either turned their “chatbox” function off or they are taking the game seriously. I like these types of situations because it means that I have their undivided attention if I want to start chatting. One of the things that I like to chat about in no-limit games is bluffing. For example, if I have already passed my cards and I am watching the action, if a player makes a bet that forces the other player to fold, I have been known to type something like “nice bluff “ or “bet you did not have the ace”. These kind of comments invariably provoke a reaction and this is what I am looking for because it tells me that people are listening and actually have their chat function turned on.
Of course, I have no read on whether the player was bluffing or not but the point is that I am entering the thought into the other players heads that there is bluffing and bullying going on in this game even if there isn’t. In their minds, anybody who talks about bluffing must be well capable of bluffing themselves because it “takes one to know one” right.....RIGHT!
Obviously, during this time I am certainly not going to attempt to bluff because I have increased the likelihood of my bets being called. But I am effectively setting the players up or setting up just one naive individual who is going to fall for it. Remember in no-limit games, it only takes one mistake from your opponent and you have made a very substantial amount of money.
There was one instance about six months ago where I had been talking about bluffing and bullying for about thirty minutes. I then went on a rush of hands at just that precise moment that made it look like I was trying to boss the table. I flopped the nut straight and simply bet an amount that made it look like I was trying to steal the pot. One player came over the top and re-raised to which I called as if to feign submission. There were numerous draws on the board and they were possibly taking me for semi-bluffing with a draw.
When the turn card appeared not to complete the draw, I bet an amount again that made it look like desperation. My opponent moved all-in to which I simply called. There is no way that they would have made this play if they had not been influenced by my table talk. They simply thought that I was carrying out what I had been talking so much about and that was bluffing when in actual fact, I was sitting there with the nuts and merely betting my powerful hand.
It is also possible to “feel out” a persons tilt as well online through their chat. If a player gets beaten in a pot and then gets into a long conversation about how his opponent never had the odds for the call and how badly they played, chances are that they are hurting from that loss. Whenever a player is hurting then that is precisely the time when they may become emotionally vulnerable.
This tends to have a much more pronounced effect online because you simply do not have the same cooling off period in between hands like you do in live play. Literally before you can blink, you are facing another hand in another situation and a player may not have calmed down from the last hand yet. As in life, there are many people who are simply not cut out to play poker professionally on a psychological level. This is the same for other professions as well but people fail to take this into account for poker, after all it is ONLY a card game is it not.
If poker was not played for money then it would in fact be ONLY a card game but it is the money aspect that creates the emotion within the game. There are numerous people playing poker who as individuals are emotionally and psychologically fragile. They play great when everything is going well but mentally disintegrate when the cards turn against them. It is precisely this type of player that is meat and drink to the savvy player whose plan is to attempt to get up their nose and upset them. I was watching a game a few weeks ago when one player had two horrendous outdraws back to back. One of the other players typed into the chatbox to no-one in particular, “that’s the funniest thing that I’ve seen in years” to which someone else typed back “yep”.
Within 10 minutes, the unlucky player had lost £1800 ($3100) and had left the table. Their last £900 was wasted by them simply trying to bully the tightest “rock” at the table in a fruitless situation. The point is that they may have done this anyway but my guess is that the comments by the two players forced them mentally “over the edge”.
At the end of the day, poker reflects life and because it is played by human beings, it is this that makes the game so unbelievably complex. Another tactic that has been used online although not by me personally is to harass and hustle players. While the sites take care to monitor chat box talk and are on the lookout for anything un sportsmanlike, there is really nothing they can do to combat ordinary “banter”. I have seen players harassed and pestered into playing someone heads up and that someone was a highly skilled player who wiped out their stack in double quick time.
This happened about six months ago and while I was not actually playing, I did in fact observe the entire process. The names have been changed to prevent any personal embarrassment but the following conversation actually happened.
MIKEY 1968: “Your blowing hot tonight lob”
LOBSTER: “Yeah, sure makes a change......dropped $1200 here this afternoon”
MIKEY 1968: “Not surprised...seen some funny things on this site”
LOBSTER: “Like what”
MIKEY 1968: “Don’t like to say, walls have hears and all that”
LOBSTER: “I win and then lose it back with more on top, unbelievable hands”
JIMSTER: “Same thing here, friend did $500 in last week on $1-$2. it’s not natural”
LOBSTER: “So come on Mik, spill the beans”
This conversation went on for over thirty minutes with “Mikey 1968” finally offering to tell “Lobster” everything that he knew but away from other ears over on table “El Paso”. Table “El Paso” just happened to be a heads up table. I followed them across to this table and within minutes, “Mikey 1968” had convinced poor “Lobster” that teams of cheats were cleaning up in the higher games and that the only safe tables were the heads up ones where collusion was impossible.
Because everything had appeared so friendly, “Lobster” never saw this coming and forty minutes later, retired from the table suffering a $3000 loss after they had been seduced into playing heads up against one of the best players on the site. A good players advantage over a bad or intermediate player is substantial enough at the best of times but in a heads up environment, it is absolutely crushing.
Many people who play online are playing poker for the very first time and are unaware of some of the seedier things that actually go on. Some players will try anything in order to get an angle and many players will be blissfully unaware that they are being watched and hunted. Of course the type of games where your opposition is sophisticated and observant are not in the low limit games. These games tend to be populated by casual recreational players.
But if you have any aspirations of moving up into the middle limits and beyond or playing in sizeable no-limit games, then you seriously need to be aware that you will be watched and certain players will try all kinds of tactics and dirty tricks in order to try and get your money. Remember to be very careful what you type into the chatbox because in an online environment, the screen really does have ears!!
This article was written for the official magazine of the World Poker Tour and has been reproduced here with their kind permission.
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