timing tells and a hand

[Redeye]

I haven't really read any of the responses, but here is disseration on timing tells.

In the past, if you even brought up the notion of timing tells on this board, you would get savaged and lectured about what if the guy spilled a can of pop, what if he is jerking off to a particular internet porn site and just lost it, what if his crack-head girlfriend just told him shes having his unholy child, or what if the internet decided to lag right at that critical instant etc. etc. All of these things could have caused him to pause in the hand, and therefore this means that timing tells are unreliable.

Unfortunately, any tell in poker is unreliable, but it pushes the percentages in a certain way that can make decisions more profitable. There is no doubt in my mind that timing tells exist and can help increase ones profitability. Are they always accurate? No. But the odds that the internet lagged, the guys girlfriend dropped an a-bomb on him, or any other possible distraction occured at a curiously interesting point in a hand is somewhat small. These possibilities decrease the reliability of the tell somewhat, but they do not diminish its value.

The two main tells I see that I think are fairly useful are as follows. 1). A long pause before calling typically means the guy has a monster and will c/r you on the next street. This also is true sometimes when a player comes out and bets.

A slow response then a raise isn't as clear. I think many times this is a value raise, and the guy is trying to decide of he has the best hand or not. Sometimes this also can be a monster, but I think that rarely is it a pure bluff (aside from the normal unpredictabilities of the original tell). In short, watch out in this spot.

2) Fast betting or calling is either someone who definately has a decent pair hand and is either betting the whole way trying to look aggressive so that you will not believe him, or calling quicly with a marginal pair trying to tell you that he is definately calling down.

But all in all, these tells are not absolute, sometimes they are wrong. They do however change decisions to more profitable ones. I would never fold a decent hand to one of these tells, unless my reads and hand reading also tell me folding is the better option. I might however use these tells to stop raising when I normally might stay aggressive. I might check-call instead of betting.

In short, I think a lot of people are coming around on their philosophy on this because I think timing tells can definately be a valuable tool. But like anything in poker, its all about the percentages.