A guy emailed me about a hand where he tried to give a false poker tell of strength (showing his neighbor his cards) to get a guy to fold to his all-in flop bet. He described himself as playing in a high-stakes home game. His email led to a discussion about how smart it is to try to influence your opponents in such a way. ...
Immediate calls are usually a drawing hand
Immediate calls tell you a lot. In my experience, they polarize someone's hand range to either super-strong or a vulnerable hand like a decent draw or top pair weak kicker. Most often, though, it will be a draw. In this $15-30 limit hand, the guy's immediate call lets you narrow his hand range a lot. I have [As] [Ks] and raise UTG. I get one fairly tight player calling me in the BB. He is ...
Silence in previously talkative guy equals discomfort
A few of us in the $15-30 game had been talking about the local school systems, with most of us even talking while we were playing hands. It was a kill pot, so it became $30-60, and this one guy who had been talking a lot, raised it under-the-gun. There was a slight confusion about something, and the floor was called to figure it out. In this interim, the raiser was completely quiet and seemed ...
Genuinely angry call means weakness
This post and the next few posts will be an assortment of behavioral poker tells that helped me in my last $15-30 limit session. I wanted to share them and also write about them in the interest of helping me use them better in a session. Sometimes I get good tells but I don’t fully know the best strategy to make the best use of them. ...
Betting motion behaviors in limit
I've been playing a $15-30 limit game, with a little bit of $20-40, the last few days. I had a few hands I wanted to talk about that pertain to betting motion speed and tendencies. Now that my book has gone to the printers, I've been having a lot of second-guessing and doubting of the way I phrased some things in the book. This is bound to happen, and I try not to beat myself up too much, because ...
Poker tells in limit hold’em: A critique of my book by Philip Newall
I’ve been reading Philip Newall’s book The Intelligent Poker Player (published by TwoPlusTwo). His book is about game theory optimal strategy, and is especially applicable to short-handed and heads-up limit Hold’em. I plan on writing a review of it soon, but in the meantime I’ll just say that I recommend it. Not only does he talk about strategy, he also has really good advice on playing poker for ...
Repetitive body movements and stillness
A guy sent me an email with this question: Just reviewing all my tells info again. Just curious if you had a quick opinion on this: if you have someone who engages in repetitive behavior, and then it stops, what does this mean? What are some examples of this you might see? ...
Loose hand movements associated with high hand strength
I wanted to add another note about Martin Staszko and his tells at the 2011 WSOP ME. One of the biggest hands he got was when he had A9 and got a full house on the turn (click for video link to start of hand). As I stated in the last post, I think he had a lot of physical looseness in this situation, and I think this was due to having such strong cards. I think the looseness/relaxation of his hand ...
2011 WSOP: Martin Staszko’s (Possible) Poker Tells
I’ve been reviewing the 2011 WSOP Final Table footage of Staszko and Heinz, trying to pick up some patterns in Staszko’s body language. I haven’t been too successful. The main thing that got in the way of analyzing his body language patterns was that Staszko just didn’t bluff very much. In order to analyze someone’s tells you need to see how they act when they’re putting out a significant bluff ...
Watching the players directly to your left
I played in a $180 buy-in tournament the other day. I got knocked out in 18th out of 85 or so (JJ against AQ and AK all-in pre-flop). I think my observational skills play a big role in me consistently doing well in tournaments (although honestly I haven't played in many decent buy-in ones). I spot a lot of body language stuff when the stacks get low in proportion to the blinds, when people are in ...