Timing Tells

Timing tells play a bigger role heads-up than in 6-max and full ring simply because heads-up requires more focus from hand to hand. As a result, detecting and exploiting timing tells can be pretty profitable.

Here's one I noticed recently:

When villains open or limp their buttons quickly most of the time, and they suddenly take a few extra seconds to act, they tend to have a weaker hand. This is especially true if the villain is multi-tabling.

A villain I was playing gave off this tell. I searched to see if he had multiple tables open and he did. I then 3-bet him every time he took extra time to open his button and he folded each time.

Of course, a better opponent may observe that you have picked up on their timing tell. The most obvious response to blatant 3-bet steals is a 4-bet re-steal. 5-bet shoves work in those spots, but only against those opponents who are willing to 4-bet bluff in the first place. Otherwise you'll just be running into the nuts.

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Updated graph just because I like posting my nice graphs: