09 Oct 2025 Intermediate This material is for medium-skilled players exploit mental game Compared to live poker, online poker has far fewer tells you can notice during a game to find out whether your opponent is bluffing or not, especially in Texas Hold’em. The reason is simple — you just can’t see the person you are playing against. Maybe that’s even good for your game, because it helps you focus more on studying poker strategy and improving your overall skills. Still, in online poker you can find several tells that reveal the strength of your opponents’ hands. Online tells will never be as reliable as live tells, but they can still be useful at times. However, I wouldn’t recommend relying on them completely when you make difficult and expensive decisions. Here are common online timing tells: Long delay and check Long delay and bet/raise Check/call, then bet Fast bet/check When the opponent’s time runs out Long delay and check This usually shows that your opponent is weak. They want you to think they were considering some tricky move with their hand, while in most cases they have nothing serious. Consider raising in this situation when you are in position, even if your own hand is weak. Long delay and bet/raise This case means the opposite. Such an action usually indicates strength, because your opponent wants you to think they were about to check due to a weak hand, while in fact they have a strong one. Think about it — when you hold a monster, you don’t want to bet too fast, showing confidence and scaring your opponents away. Be ready to fold your medium-strength hands in such spots. Check/call on the flop, then a small bet on the turn Imagine you are in position. Your opponent checks on the flop, you bet, and they call. Then on the turn they make a relatively small donk bet. In this situation you can usually put your opponent on one of the following types of hands: a drawing hand a medium-strength hand such as a middle pair. Never overestimate the strength of small bets. A weak bet is a weak bet, so treat it as weakness by default. Your opponent is just trying to stop you from making a big bet on the turn, which they don’t want to call with their weak hand or draw. They try to show a bit of strength by betting first, so they don’t have to face your big bet later. This move is called a blocking bet, meaning your opponent is trying to block your big bet. You can try raising in such situations to prevent them from improving cheaply. Fast bet/check Almost all poker rooms now allow players to choose their action before their turn. That means you can act instantly when it’s your move. However, it’s not very smart to use these options too often, for the following reasons. When you see someone insta-check, it usually shows great weakness. The player is so uninterested in their hand that they pre-selected “check” even before the action reached them. On the other hand, an insta-bet or insta-raise usually indicates strength, because your opponent is so happy to put money into the pot that they don’t even want to wait to see what others will do before them. When the opponent’s time runs out Online poker is very easy to play — not in terms of winning, but because the actions are simple: fold, check, bet or raise. That’s why many players don’t pay full attention to the game. They might be chatting, surfing the internet, or playing too many tables at once. In other words, they simply don’t notice that it’s their turn to act. Because of this lack of focus, such players play in a very straightforward way. They bet and raise only with strong hands, and check or fold with weak ones. You can be sure that this type of player won’t try creative or bluffing moves against you. If they bet, make sure your hand is strong enough to call — otherwise, fold. If they check, try betting and take the pot immediately. If they call, they probably have a drawing or a medium hand. Final Thoughts These are probably the most useful timing tells that I use in my own online game. As you can see, there aren’t that many timing tells that can show the strength of your opponents’ hands. But remember, you shouldn’t rely entirely on these tells to decide whether your opponent is bluffing or not. The more you play, the better you will understand the logic of the game and learn to read your opponents’ hands by their betting patterns. And as we know, one of the best ways to understand the strength of your opponent’s hand is through their betting behavior.
