Please Explain Internet Timing Tells To Me

[molotom]

Here are a couple of 'typical' tells I have noticed. These are relatively reliable against straightforward donks who just play their own 2 cards. However, I doubt they are any use against competent players.

1) Someone snapchecks first to act on the flop.
They are normally giving up on the hand. If they'd flopped a monster, they would have at least paused a little before deciding to check/minraise. Stealing becomes way more successful.

2) For one hand, someone who normally acts extremely quickly starts taking their time over every apparently simple decision. This is often a monster. It's particularly blatant when's a limped pot and they start agonising over 1bb bets and the like. Often if a bad player starts doing this I'll shut down and try to see what they are playing at, and make a note of what it means.

[questions]

The fact that these timing tells can give away information is one reason you should be mentally prepared to act based upon whether or not, say, you get dealt aces, or flop a monster, a draw, etc., in order that you best exploit the prevailing interpretation of what different timings mean. Obviously, pros and semi-pros are not going to be misled easily, but most of us play recreationally and overthink hands to the point that, it can make a difference, and when you have the nuts at the river, deceptive timing can make the difference in getting your opponent to either call or fold a pot-sized bet (for example, if you have the ace-high flush and your opponent has the king-high flush, you can hesitate so as to send signals that you have a flush but not the ace). I like UB's software for this reason, because it's set up in such a way that you can have a simple plan for playing hands. Anyway, don't put too much stock in timing, just play good cards.

[Grey]

[ QUOTE ]
The insta flop call of your CB is almost always a marginal made hand.

[/ QUOTE ]Or a draw. Basically they're saying "please be scared of my instant decision and check the next street".

It's the only semi-reliable timing tell I've ever noticed. And after I noticed it I noticed that I naturally did it too.

[Abbaddabba]

long pause when checked to at the river followed by a bet is almost never a bluff.

if they were going to bluff, they'd spit it out as fast and intimidating as they could.