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 ...
Another example of Pius Heinz avoiding eye contact with a big hand
(Apologies: apparently the YouTube video I was linking to for this post has been removed. I will work on trying to find another video and edit this post.) I was reviewing some WSOP footage and saw another very good example of Pius Heinz avoiding eye contact when he hits a big hand. This was the tell I talked about in my last WSOP-related post. This is pre-November-9, when they were nearing the ...
Poker tells at 2011 WSOP Final Table: Pius Heinz’ eye-contact tell
(Apologies; it looks like the YouTube video I linked to for this post and the following post has been removed. I will try to remedy this in the future.) This post is about the most significant poker tell that I saw at the Final Table of the 2011 WSOP NLHE Main Event. It involves Pius Heinz and the amount of eye contact he would make with his opponent in different situations. In a nutshell, Heinz' ...
Situations where poker tells are most important
I noticed a few poker tells I thought were significant in the 2011 WSOP Main Event final table, and I’ll be talking about them for the next couple blog posts. But for the most part, the tells were very few and far between. There were only a handful of moments in the play between the final four players (Heinz, Lamb, Staszko, and Giannetti) where I thought someone’s body language was giving away ...
“Disclaimers”: a category for some common verbal statements in poker
There is a class of verbal statements you hear a lot in poker that I call disclaimers. These are statements that attempt to explain away, or “disclaim”, the real meaning behind an action. A basic example of this would be when a no-limit tournament player goes all in while announcing something like, “I’ve only got a few chips left. I guess I’ve got to go all-in.” He is implying that him not having ...
Self-delusion and overconfidence in poker
Humans are very good at deluding themselves. Nowhere is this more obvious than in poker. I have known many poker players who are mediocre, or even just plain awful, but who are able to convince themselves they are very good at the game. A New York Times article called “Don’t Blink! The Hazards of Overconfidence" highlights how common the delusion of overconfidence can be. It’s focused on stock ...
A tricky player with a rather unique betting motion tell
I was excited to find a new tell the other day. It’s one I’m surprised I’ve never noticed before, and I wonder if it might be fairly frequent. I’d imagine it might be common amongst the players who think they're being very tricky. There’s this guy who’s been playing the $15-30 game lately who’s a total unpredictable maniac. He will basically play any two when the feeling strikes him, and if he ...
Looking down quickly when betting a weak hand
For some players, an important place to get tells is during the flop continuation bet and turn continuation bet after they have raised pre-flop. There are little tendencies that can give you an indication that the pre-flop raiser either is comfortable betting or uncomfortable betting, and even if these tells are far from being 100% reliable, they still can be significant and influence your play. I ...
Limit players who make it obvious they’re calling your bet
One of the more obvious behavioral tells you can see in any poker game is the “I’m calling you” move, where a player is ready to shove their chips into the pot, or in some cases actually does shove their chips into the pot before the bettor. There are several ways this tell can be displayed, and it means different things depending on a player’s tendencies and the situation, but in limit games this ...
Gambler’s Fallacy and why not to show opponents AA or KK
Talking about the Gambler's Fallacy in my last post, I was reminded of another poker application of this concept. The situation comes up frequently when you hold AA or KK, and you raise preflop and everyone folds. Some people will show their hands in situations like this, just because it's kind of fun to show big hands. It's also sometimes sort of a way to complain because the raiser didn't get ...
Gambler’s Fallacy in poker. Defensive chip handling tell.
I fell victim to the "gambler's fallacy" the other day at poker. The gambler's fallacy is the belief that because something out-of-the-ordinary has occurred, it will be less likely to occur again. Casinos make a lot of money on this idea with roulette, because many people have a natural tendency to say, "oh, it's been red 5 times in a row, better bet on black", when in reality, the chances of the ...
A hand using poker tells – an introduction to the book
A friend of mine told me I should have a dramatic hand to start the book with, to show an example of using tells in practice, and to get people's attention. I thought it was a good idea. I have a bunch of notes of hands I've played from a long time ago, and I thought the hand I finally decided on was a good one. This is from a hand I played in 2005 in Albuquerque, NM. Names have been changed to ...
Decision fatigue in poker
I read an article in the NY Times called 'Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue'. It was about a series of studies that showed that making decisions wears you out mentally. People who face a series of decisions will be increasingly worn out until they reach a point where they are not making their best decisions, and will effectively not care as much about the outcome of their decisions. It also ...
Most ridiculous poker hand ever televised
You will enjoy this if you haven't seen it already. It's from a Spanish televised poker tournament where one guy accidentally flips his cards up and plays heads-up against a player who flops a set. See if you can count the number of pure fundamental mistakes made by both these players. It is poker comedy at its best. No, the games aren't dead and will never be dead. ...
Great live poker advice from Limon
Limon is the twoplustwo.com handle of a high-stakes no-limit player who lives in Los Angeles. He's been playing professionally for 10 years at places like the Commerce. In 2009, he started a thread in the High Stakes NL forum with a bunch of his thoughts on the game. That thread has stayed near the top of the forum for the last two years, and Limon has continually revisited it to answer questions, ...
Immediate calls and raises, and talking a lot after betting
On the Pokerstars Big Game (season 1, week 2, ep. 3) there's a hand where Daniel Negreanu has the nut straight on the turn, and the millionaire/amateur poker player Jason Calacanis turns a set and fills up on the river. Calacanis shows some common tells. For one, he's super-talkative with a big hand. Also important are his immediate calls and bets, which give away a lot of info. ...
Bluffing and hand tension
At the last NLHE game I played ($5-10 at Parx Casino outside Phillie), there was a reliable tell that influenced one of my decisions. This one has to do with hand tension when a player was bluffing versus when he was value-betting. ...
Pre-flop looking-at-hole-cards tell
In the most recent session I played (Parx Casino $5-10 NLHE), there were a couple hands where tells came into play. In this post and the next, I’ll talk about a couple physical tells I spotted that influenced the way I played my hand. The tell in this post involves the length of time a pre-flop raiser would look at his hole cards. ...
“Sick Call” Kenny vs. guy with good hand
I was browsing Twoplustwo.com the other day and saw this thread about Kenny Tran. They call him "Sick Call" Kenny because there've been several televised tournaments where he's made some unbelievable "sick calls" with weak hands. This hand from an old WSOP Main Event makes you wonder about Kenny's live-read skills, though (although he could be a fantastic player, I don't know anything about ...
Some tells in a $5-10 no-limit game
I went to Spirit Mountain Casino (in Grand Ronde, Oregon) this past weekend to study the difference between no-limit tells across a range of three different stakes: $1-3, $2-5, and $5-10. I wanted to do this because I'd been working on some chapters for the book related to how tells differ across stakes and between limit and no-limit. I'll tell you a few interesting observations I made on the ...
Phil Galfond and some great thoughts on poker
I had read the "Jman28 Well" thread on Twoplustwo.com about five years ago, then saw it was bumped just recently so I read the whole thing over again. If you don't know who Phil Galfond is, he's only one of the best players in the world. He's won millions beating up on high-stakes online cash game regulars under the screen name OMGClayAiken. His posts on Twoplustwo get highly-deserved accolades ...
Looking down when betting. Studying body posture.
Whenever I make a bad read on someone, which will happen occasionally, I get pissed off and start to really study the player and their behavior and try to figure out where I went wrong. It's my way of punishing myself for making mistakes. Basically, I want every stupid thing I do to have something good come out of it, so if I can just get a little bit of knowledge from every stupid thing I do I ...
Best strategy for playing a limit game with a kill
Continuing from my last post, I've got another big, basic strategy mistake I see even a lot of good players make in the $15-30 fixed limit game I play in. The mistake is this: they don't adjust their strategy to the fact that it's a kill game. For those of you unfamiliar with what a kill is, here's how it works; if a player wins two pots in a row, the next hand become double the stakes (in this ...
A forceful bet on the river and fake aggravation
I’m going to continue to talk about “Lee”, the player I described in the last blog post. I’ll describe a $30-60 limit hand I played with him recently, and how his specific tells changed my play of the hand. So, it’s a $15-30 pot, and I’d just won the last two hands, making it a kill pot of $30-60. Lee has been playing very recklessly the last hour or so. He’s a very aggressive player; betting a ...