Tell me about tells

[Tony Dunst]

So having read through a number of the posts on this forum from some of the accomplished predominately live players they often include what they saw in how the opponent looked/acted/behaved or whatever tells they had.

I have to confess as a guy who spent the majority of his poker 'career' online I'm very mediocre with the live reads and tells thing.

There's a couple of obvious ones I look for, a quick glance at the chips when the flop peels that normally indicates that a player hit or intends to bet. Checking back at their cards when a flush card hits that lets you know they're often holding two different suits in their hand. Outside that I don't have much I put any real faith in.

What kind of tells/vibes do you guys look for? Any good anecdotes where you used one to sway a tough decision? What kind of consistency do you believe certain tells to have as far as their indication goes?

Thanks, Tony

[Annette Obrestad]

Im with u on this one Tony. Altho I do think I'm starting to get a better feel for the tendencies out there amongst bad-avg players. Some of the things I've seen other than the ones you've included:

- How fast, and the hand movement of ppl when they check to u after calling a preflopraise OOP. Usually I find that if someone checks really fast they either flopped a monster or they have ****. When they stop to think about it before checking, they tend to have some sort of draw, a piece of the board, trying to decide whether they should leave, c/r or whatever.

If they give u the rly soft check and barely tap the table they usually have something but not very strong, they want u to think u noticed their check so they can see a cheap turn. Knocking the table rly hard usually means the same thing, they're trying to scare u from betting by using the 'aggressive check'. I'm more scared when they just do the normal 'I check, tap the table twice' routine... obv this only applies if the player isnt aware of or cares about hiding his tells.

-Other things that I've noticed is ppls pulse and how fast they're breathing. Yes, they do it with both good and bad hands, but its the time it takes for them to calm down thats important. If they keep going they are more likely to be bluffing because its much harder to control something when ur uncomfortable than when ur sitting there with the nuts praying for the guy to call. So I'll often take a while on the river just to see how much time it takes them to get their pulse down regardless if I'm folding or not because I wanna be able to compare their reactions next tiem it happens if I get to see a showdown.

- Also, I dont know if this goes for u, but from own experience, I tend to get kinda stiff and tence when I'm bluffing. If I move, I feel like my movements are being forced a bit and It doesnt seem natural. U can tell if other ppl are the same way. Just a small movement from someone who sit right up and down for a long time can tell u if hes weak or strong.

Just what I can come up with from the top of my head that u cant read in all the books.

Also, I find that the things that I notice in myself that could be tells if I didnt try to hide them and be consistent in my way of betting is things that other ppl do as well, so If there's anything u catch urself doing and u think to urself...'****, did i give away a tell by doing that?' Yes, u probably did but ppl dont notice it often enough. Then thats stuff u can look for in ur opponents. Using ur weaknesses as a human being to ur own advantage can be quite profitable.

I also recommand reading Hellmuth and Navarros Read Em And Reap book. I've read it twice already and there's some rly interesting stuff in it.. I know for sure I'll be going through it again and again untill its all stuck in my head.

Hope that helps.

[Barry Greenstein]

Tony, Annette,

I'm not sure if this is worthwhile for you guys to listen to, but I did a "Tips From the Bear" on Tells:

http://www.pokerroad.com/tips_from_the_bear/lesson8/

Barry

[Juan Carlos Alvarado]

Joe Navarro ftw, imo.


My favorite "tell" anecdote happened during the wsop last year. I'm very talkative at the table and usually pretty friendly, I think this really helps pick up tells on people because once you're friendly with the other players it seems that they become more honest with you.

So a guy (middle age white dude wearing a cap) raises to 600 with like 8k behind at 100/200 25 I think, and it folded to me in the BB with 22. I call and the flop is K83r I check and the guy checks, the turn is an Ad putting two d's on board. I decided to bet at it because I felt that it was more likely that he had 99 -QQ than Ax so I bet about 1,200. He looks back at his cards, grabs chips to raise shuffles for a little and then just calls. The river is another 3x.

I thought about betting but by now I decided he either has AT-AQ or he has a flush draw that missed. So I check and he grabbed like 4k which was more than half his stack and about a pot sized bet, and he throws his chips in with a flick of the wrist, giving the chips that kind of "spin" throw... I don't know if this is how he value bets or if this is how he bluffs but I decided to stand up from my chair and yell "YOU DID THE SPIN THROW, THATS ALWAYS A BLUFF" just to see what his reaction was, he remained just as still and quiet. At this point I knew that if I talk for 2 minutes I'd eventually be able to get one or two tells that will let me decide whether or not I can call. So for the next 2 or 3 minutes I kept saying stuff like "I cant beat anything, but I can probably beat you" "I make one sick call per tourney, this might be it" etc etc....this guy wasn't giving anything away, and finally I decide to go under the table and look at his feet. Navarro says the feet are the most truthful part of the body and whenever I look under the table people always think I'm just being a clown and they don't change the way their feet are positioned. So I go under and see his feet are flat on the ground, I come back up and I say "your feet say you're bluffing" at which point he smiles at me, I throw the chips in and he mucks his hand, I show the 22 and the guy announces to the table "You know what the sick thing is.....I've seen him do this before" pretty sure I didn't get bluffed again at that table.

Anyway I talked about this in the gobbo thread, I think the best advice I can give for reading people is to wait for 2 or 3 minutes before you decide anything. You should also usually look for 2 or more tells before you're convinced one way or the other, in this case it was the way he threw his chips in + his feet + his smile. When they have a strong hand, especially with fish, it's way easier to get 3 strength tells, like he breathes heavily, his eyes are looking away from the table, and 3 minutes later he puts his hands behind his head. From my experience there is almost always a huge tell after a 2 minute stare down.

Also, I had a lot of trouble focusing on people at the table and learning their tells when I first moved from online to live. A friend of mine who is a live player gave me a good tip/exercise to try at the table so I could get used to picking up physical tells. What he told me to do was to forget everyone at the table and just pick one guy every hour, and focus on everything that guy does, soon enough you'll get into the habit of looking at all of the players at your table at the same time, and you'll pick up something on almost everyone.

Hope that helped a little.

[Daniel Negreanu]

Just pay attention. It seems like pretty bare advice but it's more powerful than you think even when it doesn't seem like you are noticing anything of value. When watching a hand, don't just focus solely on bet sizing and how the hands are being played, but what your opponents react to cards, get a sense for how long it takes them to react, look for any random things that seem peculiar. For example, if you noticed something very subtle in an opponent, and then saw that he was bluffing- look for that again. If you see that same thing, then test out the tell and see if it's accurate.

I get a lot of flack sometimes for making calls on the river when I know a guy has me beat. Sometimes I make that call because the price is really good, but other times I'm looking at the bigger picture. I want to see the hand, and see if the tell I picked up was consistent with what I thought it should mean.

I did it in the WSOPE main event against Phillipe. I had 2c 5c on a flop of Ac Jh 8c and he led out- I called. The turn was an Ace and he checked quickly- I checked. The river was a 5 and he bet it. He went into a long ramble about the hand and everything he'd said led me to believe I was definitely beat. Knowing that he's be sitting on my left all day and had good chips, I wanted to know for sure. The bet wasn't big and wouldn't have a big impact on my stack. I called, he turned over A-J and despite spewing off 1800 with a 5, it was worth every penny and I made zero mistakes against him the rest of the way.

[Annette Obrestad]

Good posts guys, keep em coming.

[Daniel Alaei]

If a guy places a hand over his mouth after betting he's usually bluffing. Or if someone looks back at their hand after a flush card hits it means they do NOT have a flush...jkjk. I put a lot of weight into my reads and I think it's a huge part of playing live poker, however, I don't really believe in blanket tells as they are so easy to manipulate (although I do have a couple of "secret" ones that are eerily dependable. Sometimes so reliable that I think I must be getting leveled and end up calling only to see that the original read was correct). Anyway, like Daniel said, you just got to pay attention. I wouldn't focus too much on most obvious physical tells or even betting tells as they are so easy to manipulate. It's all in the body language and the only way to learn that is by experience. Sometimes you can see genuine subtle sighs of relief when you don't instacall someone after they make an all in bet. Trying to put this stuff in words is futile as anything that can be explained can also be corrected. Maybe 50 years from now I'll be able to transmit my thoughts on this in some way other than words. Until then, just keep playing!