Well it’s my 1,705th post here at FTR so I thought I’d celebrate by talking about timing tells.

There’s already an article on timing tells:

http://www.flopturnriver.com/Online-Poker-Tells.php

In particular I like the advice to never auto fold in LP or the blinds (people who auto-fold their blinds are getting targeted for stealing). Super applicable to rush/zoom too.

For the most part, there are only two types of villain - longer means weaker and longer means stronger. Very few actually mix and match (well at my stakes anyway). It’s never a great tell (especially vs multitablers), but it’s another piece of the hand reading jigsaw that can and should be considered.

Postflop, be wary of a pause + call (especially from better players). It’s often call/raise, not call/fold that they’re deliberating over. A quick call from villain is less threatening, but I didn’t start this thread to talk about the villain...

You should try to take the same amount of time for all your clicks, usually around 3 seconds. It gives you time to think without giving anything away. There are some situations where you want to manipulate your timing tells though:

- I tend to snap reraise if I'm hoping for a fold

- Snap shoves are essential for a stop-n-go (call pre from blinds, donk shove flop)

- I tank fold from the BB if SB/BTN have stolen a couple of times. Passive blind defense.

-When faced with an easy call vs a shove don’t tank, snap. Firstly, you don’t want to be seen thinking about trivial calls with good hands (why did he have to think about calling there? I’m going to lean on this guy a bit he’s clearly weak) and secondly when you make a correct-but-wide call (like BB vs minshove) it shows the regs you know what you’re doing and tells the fish not to try stealing (because you’ll call with anything).

- When folding in general you want to take a little time unless it’s to a real show of strength where folding is super standard.

It’s also important to think about your table image and mix these things up as the table gets short. Be aware of what timings you used with the hands you’ve shown down, especially when it gets to HU.

Thoughts?