Unless you are playing multiple tables then you will find that you always have time to think through poker hands in online play more than what you think. I was sitting with a friend a few weeks back observing his game after he asked if I would critique his play. One of the first things that I noticed was that he was playing too fast.
He was only playing two tables but he didn’t slow down from making automatic folds to when he really did have something to think about. In one such hand he had just folded junk when the following situation cropped up. He had the A-Q in early position and insta-raised. It was folded around to the cut-off who called as did the button and both blinds.
We had a five way pot and the flop came A-K-10 two suits, he led out with a pot sized bet and got two callers. The turn card brought a third spade making a possible flush. He bet two thirds pot and was called by both players. The river card was a brick and he checked. The first player bet half pot and was called by the second player and our hero also called without a moments thought.
The split second he clicked “call” I told him that he was beat. The winner had the flush while the other caller had A-10 for top and bottom pair on the flop. His entire play was too fast and automatic and he needed to slow the process down. He started off with an A-Q out of position so he needed to factor that into his play.
He didn’t need to make a pot sized bet on the flop and he certainly didn’t need to make another bet on the turn or call the river bet and call. But the problem was that he didn’t allow himself any thinking time in the hand even though he clearly had the time to do so. I see these tendencies an awful lot in online poker and it is mainly to do with players at the lower levels who get used to the faster pace of online play. This problem can be made even worse by players multi-tabling.
There is always time to think in online poker even if it is only just for a few seconds. If you have audio prompts telling you that you need to act on other tables then you are wise to ignore them if you are in the middle of a crucial pot.