September 29, 2009
I’m Telling Mom
There are some poker players out there that look at the other players around the table more than they look at their own cards. And they do that for good reason. Mostly, they’re looking for tells. Now you can break tells down into a few different categories. The first and most obvious to watch for are physical tells. Facial expression, hand movements, body movements, all of these can be tells if they happen a certain way at the casino. That is, if they happen say when an opponent is making a big bet or trying to bluff. One of the common rules of thumb is that humans try to act strong when they’re weak, and act weak when they’re strong. So if you pick up on a certain tick or habit on a hand, and you see it happen again when you’re involved, that’s an instance when a tell can help you. There are also the less talked about but possibly more powerful chip tells. Next time you’re in a poker game, start watching how players place their chips in the pot. Do they fling them in there; do they stack then neatly and place them; do they coolly toss them in? All of these things don’t tell you anything by themselves. But if you notice a certain style over the course of a night, and then the next time they bet totally differently, that’s a tell. What it means, well, you’ll find out at the end of the hand. But if you start putting these things together, you’ll realize that when a player who tosses chips carefully places them, it probably means the same thing it did on the first hand you noticed him do it.
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