Live tells

[Kilgore_Trout]

Just wondering how much attention people give to these?

To be honest I'm usually too busy thinking about my hand and what my opponents may have to notice or think about tells.

However, ones I've heard quoted are:

A player that keeps staring at the flop has definitely missed. A player that looks at the flop then starts looking at his chips or your chips has usually hit.

Or - someone that makes a bet and gives you the big stare down is usually weak and wants the fold.

What about speech play during a hand?

Any thoughts on these or any other tells? Any good examples?

[Tal]

Biggest mistake you can make is employing general rules for live tells. Everyone is different and they all have their own reactions to different situations.

However...

Imagine you've bet on a horse. That horse is third but doing well, going into the final furlong. The commentator says "And here comes Lucky Day!!!" and there is your horse storming through the field. What is your heart doing at that moment?

The same applies in poker. If you have the stone cold nuts, it is really hard to stop the adrenaline flowing. Generally speaking, people will have an outlet for that adrenaline - a stompy foot, shallower breathing, sipping their drink, leaning forward and rocking back, whatever - and the trick (if there is one) is to identify these traits in your opponents.

Obviously, if you're on a table with a live pro, it's less likely you'll spot anything significant. Doesn't mean it's not there; these are chemical reactions in the human body after all. But it might not be worth your time trying to find something.

Read Caro because it's useful but as someone who relies on live reads (arguably too much ), I'd advise you to steer clear of taking it literally. Judi James has a more sensible starter for ten:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/s/ref=sr_rd_mob?rh=i%3Astripbooks%2Cn%3A270479%2Cp_lbr_books_authors_browse-bin%3AJudi+James&ie=UTF8

 

[outragous76]

Was a good post tal right up until Judi James which is terrible!

Alan schoonmaker is a good read

[Tal]

Was a good post tal right up until Judi James which is terrible!

Alan schoonmaker is a good read

As a poker book, it's not good (hence the duck under the chair!). However, as a very basic NLP/psychology in practice in a strategy game book, it is nice start.

[Tal]

Yes to schoonmaker tho.

[corkeye]

[sweeping generalisation]Real smiles (usually when u prompt by opening up conversation) = they have the goods.

Forced/ fake smiles usually is a bluff. [\sweeping generalisation]

[Doobs]

Mike Caro crushing at the minute with his reads

[Tal]

Mike Caro crushing at the minute with his reads

Sigh...

[muckthenuts]

Can confirm Mike Caro's book cost me more money than it made me

[SuuPRlim]

Problem with physical tells is they are extremely difficult to use effectively without a decent knowledge of the person who is doing them. All very well saying "people who touch there face a lot are usually bluffing" but what if you just run into a guy with hayfever and he's touching his face a lot today lol, like Tal says people do everything for different reasons and have different habbits, so my advice would be to watch out for physical information and try figure out exactly what it means before using it to influence a decision.

Obviously some stuff is just there is it's too important to ignore, so using your own generalisation built from experience is the only real option although you have to be comfortable knowing that you'll be wrong a bit of the time - but still even though it;s not 100% reliable it's still information that you have that you didn;t, and that has some value.

[Tal]

If I could be helpful with a reasonably reliable one: it is very difficult to lie quickly. If you ask someone a direct question and they answer quickly, it is very rarely a lie.

Try this yourself. Ask a friend what colour their first car was. To lie, they have to think of the colour it was and then think of another colour. The human brain doesn't let you go straight to the second colour.

The longer the pause before the answer, the less weight you should give to their answer (NB I'm not saying it is a lie if they delay, but you should be less inclined to accept their word)

[kinboshi]

Shaking hands when they bet can signify a monster, or they've just given up heroin.

[zerofive]

Shaking hands when they bet can signify a monster, or they've just given up heroin.

Don't recall ever shaking anyone's hand when I've made a bet.

[SuuPRlim]

Shaking hands when they bet can signify a monster, or they've just given up heroin.

Don't recall ever shaking anyone's hand when I've made a bet.

you never were a gentleman.

[zerofive]

It's good to have a decent knowledge bank of live tells. Basically a massive plus to playing live poker is the information we pick up from some of the basic things people do/say. It would be foolish not to use these things to our advantage, just as long as we don't start basing our decision-making process on them.

Physical tells are good additional information when we are in a tough spot. For example, if we're faced with a tough river decision and we might be leaning towards a fold, instead of looking back at our hand and then to the size of the pot we're about to let go, let's look up and see villain's heart beating out of his chest. That might just be the information we need to make a good fold. There are a lot of classic tells that have helped me a lot in the past to make some folds that I'd never have been able to make online, but - as mentioned in this thread already - not all tells apply to everyone. If we're playing in a game with some regs in it, let's watch them and see what they do as they're making decisions. What do they do when they bluff? What do they do when they value bet? As tempting as it is to just pick up our iPhone after we fold, let's gather some reliable tells and tilt them later on with a solid king-high hero call.

We can use our knowledge of basic tells to sway the action in our favour as well. It's quite likely that there will be a few players at our table with some, albeit extremely limited, knowledge of physical tells. These are usually going to be things that they themselves do, and for that reason are often weak-means-strong and strong-means-weak tells (because these require a conscious intervention, unlike genuine tells such as shaking or gulping.) An example might be where we missed the absolute world on a draw-heavy board, and villain is maybe a little stubborn and will sometimes call you with a one-pair type hand. Saying something along the lines of "I guess nobody wants this pot lol" as we bet could sway their decision slightly as it looks like a classic weak-means-strong tell. They know enough to know that "that's what I would say if I had a monster," and if they don't, well then we shouldn't be trying to bluff them anyway!