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In general, a player making a significant bet who double-checks his cards before betting will tend to have a strong hand. Here are a few reasons and factors in this area:
- Weak hands generally avoid double-checking: Bluffers want to appear confident, and rechecking their cards can signal uncertainty or weakness.
- Strong hands have more freedom to double-check: Strong-hand bettors are more relaxed about how they appear and may even consciously or unconsciously try to look uncertain.
- Timing and conspicuousness matter: A noticeable double-check immediately before betting is more likely to indicate strength; a quick, discreet check when a new card arrives is much less meaningful.
To explain this in more detail, I’ll give you an excerpt from a script for a video in my Reading Poker Tells Video series:
Double-Checking of Hole Cards Before A Post-Flop Bet
Players betting weak hands or bluffs have a motivation to appear certain and confident. Doublechecking cards could potentially convey uncertainty and weakness to an opponent. This means that players betting weak hands won’t generally want to doublecheck their cards.
Another reason: if a player with a weak hand DOES need to actually double-check his cards, checking his cards will make him less likely to bluff. Because he’s had to double-check his cards, he has potentially shown some weakness to his opponent. This will tend to weaken the resolve of players who otherwise might have decided to bluff. They may think something like “I was going to bluff but then I had to check my cards and my opponent saw that, so maybe it’s not the best time to bluff.”
What about players betting strong hands? Players betting strong hands are relaxed. They don’t care nearly as much about how their behavior is interpreted. This accounts for all sorts of unusual behavior from players betting with strong hands.
Also, players with strong hands can have a motivation to seem uncertain or weak. Because double-checking cards can be interpreted as uncertainty and weakness, players with strong hands may want to do it for that reason, either consciously or unconsciously.
Important points
Let’s look at a few important points.
Players who actually need to double-check their hole cards will tend to do so as inconspicuously as possible. They don’t want to draw attention to themselves. The least conspicuous time to check hole cards is right before or after new cards come out. This is when opponent attention is most focused elsewhere and least-focused on other opponents. This is why you’ll often see players making peeks back at their cards right before or after the turn or river comes out.
And this is why the closer in time the double-check is to the player’s bet, the more likely it is to adhere to the general pattern. The most extreme example of this is a player who double-checks his cards right before he bets. In the intro hand we looked at, that player’s double-check came right before he bet. That’s very likely to adhere to the pattern.
On the other end of the spectrum is a player who double-checks his cards right when the new cards arrive; that player is much less likely to adhere to the pattern as that’s a more normal time to check cards.
In the same way, legitimate double-checks of cards will tend to be done pretty quickly and as inconspicuously as possible. The more ostentatious a double-checking of cards is from a bettor, the more likely it is to represent strength. A player who sneaks a quick, furtive peek at his cards when opponent attention is elsewhere is less likely to adhere to the pattern. Whereas a player who lifts his cards up in an obvious way to look at them before betting is more likely to adhere to the pattern.
Here are a couple examples, in an excerpt from the video quoted above:
Zachary Elwood is the author of the Reading Poker Tells trilogy of books, which has been translated into eight languages and sold more than 48,000 copies. See more frequently asked poker tells questions.