Had an interesting hand yesterday where I maybe should have made a big hero fold based on a combination of bet-sizing and behavior. It's live $5-10. There's an UTG limp (from a guy who is known for limping big pairs first-in). The guy UTG+1, who is usually loose-passive, not often aggressive, and who has only $600 to start, makes it $30. The sizing is very reliable weakness ...
Stretched-lips facial expression when betting
I was working on a new video in my series. This one about the 'stretched-out lips' facial expression when seen from players making significant bets. I put together a little visual compilation from some of the hands I'm using in the video, below. Stretched-out lips communicate concern, so it's not surprising it mostly shows up from players with strong hands. Sometimes it shows up very quick, just a ...
Review of poker tells training from Galvin Bay
The following is a review for my poker tells video series sent in by Galvin Bay. Galvin is a professional poker player who currently plays in Macau games. He has also written some poker books (like The Art of Poker) and created poker training videos. Below he gives a review and also some notes on his experience with a couple specific tells. ...
The Poker Guys’ The Breakdown videos focus on behavior from televised poker
Jonathan Levy and Grant Denison are two Portland, Oregon-area pro poker players. I first met Jonathan playing some $20-40 Limit Hold’em up in Washington state, as you can often find him doing. For the past year or so, he and Grant have been doing a weekly poker podcast and videos that analyze hands from televised poker footage. They call themselves The Poker Guys and they've named their weekly ...
New poker tells video series
So the last few months I've been working on a new video series, which I've titled Reading Poker Tells Video. I partnered with Chicago's Windy City Poker Championships, run by Kirk Fallah, so I could use the footage from their cash games and tournaments to make instructional training videos about poker behavior and tells. The last few months I've been watching their footage, analyzing it, and ...
Poker pro Davidi Kitai talks about poker tells
In a PokerNews interview of respected Belgian poker pro Davidi Kitai, poker journalist Remko Rinkema conducts a short interview of Kitai on the subject of poker tells. If you're not familiar with him, here is Kitai's Wikipedia page. Here’s a quick synopsis of the few points Kitai makes in the interview: ...
Poker tells at a Chicago poker tournament
This past weekend I went to a Windy City Poker charity tournament in Chicago. I played a couple interesting hands that featured a good amount of reliable poker tells, which I’ll share below. The tournament was a $1,000 buy-in one; it got about 50 players. It had one featured table, with RFID sensors and camera coverage, that switched players once every hour. The episodes didn’t stream live but ...
A couple televised poker hands and analysis
The following is an email from Thomas Hutchinson, a reader of my books, interspersed with my responses: "Firstly I just want to say thank you very much for writing both Verbal Poker Tells and Reading Poker Tells, I have read both books cover to cover many times and would consider them the best poker tell books out on the market at the moment. So thanks again :) I have a couple of questions which ...
WSOP mention & early-hand ostentatious behavior
I got a few texts from friends the other night, telling me I’d gotten another shout-out from Norman Chad on the latest WSOP episode. Here’s the clip below; the hand starts at 29:30: Dan Smith goes to raise with Qc 9c and drops a chip. He smiles sheepishly and says emphatically, "Terrible omen; I'm going to make it 90 thousand anyway." He then slams down his chips in an exaggerated ...
Poker Tells Webinar on September 25th
I'm doing a live poker tells webinar on September 25th at 6pm PST (9pm EST). It costs $55. Tickets are on sale now on this page: www.readingpokertells.com/poker-tells-webinar. The webinar is basically the same presentation I did live in Las Vegas this past summer. The response to those seminars was very positive. You can read some attendee testimonials here: ...
Jason Lavallee on immediate bets being polarizing
Kristy Arnett interviewed Canadian poker pro Jason Lavallee in 2013 for PokerNews (click here for full audio interview.) In the audio interview, he talked about a queen-high call-down he made in a European Poker Tour event. His opponent's bet-timing played a role in his decision. Basically, he thought that an immediate bet meant that her range was polarized, because most players don't know what to ...
Jonathan Little: Paying attention to opponent behavior
The following is a guest blog post from Jonathan Little. Little is a two-time WPT champion with over $5,000,000 in career earnings. He is the owner of the training site FloatTheTurn.com and is the author of numerous best-selling poker books. You can follow him on twitter @JonathanLittle. Jonathan is running a series of live seminars during the 2014 WSOP with poker tells author Zachary Elwood. ...
Recent Vegas Trip and Poker Tells Seminar
I went to Vegas last week for a week, mainly for the poker tells seminar I was doing, but also to play some poker and do some promotional stuff for the book. (If you haven't heard about the poker tells presentation I'm doing, here's a PokerNews article talking about it: http://learn.pokernews.com/news/2014/06/poker-tells-seminar-at-wsop-makes-use-of-unique-behavioral-d-4355.htm.) The seminar ...
A Live Tell in 2-7 Triple Draw
This following is a guest blog post from Los Angeles poker player Josh Hale. You can follow Josh Hale on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/red_stagg. The Los Angeles Poker Classic just concluded and with it, one of my favorite times of the year for poker. I count myself amongst the many people consider the LAPC to be one of the best tournament series of year (perhaps second only to the WSOP) ...
Players who get more relaxed and talkative when winning
An acquaintance of mine emailed me this story from his home game. This is a small stakes home game: .10 Euro blinds, NLHE. My response follows his email. There's something I realized last saturday. We were playing six handed and of the guys was winning big time. Let's call him Robert. He hit every hand, was paid off every time, it was just his evening. Normally, he is one the more losing ...
A Queen-high call down involving immediate bets from an opponent
I saw this PokerNews story where Kristy Arnett interviewed Jason Lavallee, the winner of this year's PokerStars European Poker Tour London High Roller, about a Queen high call-down he made on the final table of that tournament. Here's the story: http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/strategy-with-kristy-jason-lavallee-discusses-a-queen-high-c-16743.htm ...
Analysis of Sylvain Loosli’s potential poker tells in 2013 WSOP Main Event
In this post, I’m going to describe my analysis of Sylvain Loosli that I did prior to and during the 2013 WSOP Main Event final table. I had been hired by Amir Lehavot to analyze his opponents and himself for possible behavioral leaks. The point of this post is not just to talk about how I went about trying to find patterns in Loosli and what those patterns may have been, it’s also to talk about ...
Analyzing poker tells for Amir Lehavot at the 2013 WSOP Main Event
A couple weeks before the WSOP Main Event final table, I got an email from Amir Lehavot (founder of PokerWit.com and 3rd in this year's WSOP ME), asking if I’d be interested in helping him prepare for the final table. After discussing what I might be able to do to help him, and making sure we had similar expectations, I agreed. My role was to analyze existing footage of his opponents for possible ...
Reading Poker Tells book mentioned in 2013 WSOP
This year, during the World Series of Poker Main Event broadcast, my book Reading Poker Tells got a shout-out from Norman Chad. Here's the clip; go to the 1hr1m point if it doesn't automatically take you there. I'd sent a copy of Reading Poker Tells to Norman a few months ago, but I've sent out so many books over the past year to people (roughly $4,000 worth!) and haven't heard back from ...
A couple of interesting hands from $1-2 NL
Just a couple interesting spots from some recent hands where someone's behavior played a role in my decision-making. First one is from $1-2 NL. I had about $700 and the guy directly to my left had about $600. A couple limpers in front of me. I limp with 46 of diamonds. The guy directly to my left was an older guy who was "tricky", and who liked to make small raises pre-flop as pot-builders in ...
Immediate bets and calls in a $2-5 hand
I've been much more attuned to bet-timing tells lately, just going out of my way to study it more. I think bet-timing tells are responsible for a lot of the more subtle reads of situations that experienced players can get. I also think a lot of the time this stuff can be analyzed in an instinctual way by experienced players. For instance, in the hand I'm going to describe, I think a lot of ...
No rechecking of hole cards on flush-y board helps define opponent’s range?
Played $2-5 NL today and this hand went down. I raise from CO with 8c8d to $20. I get a call from the big blind. We have a little bit of history because he’s a bit steamed from a hand an hour or so ago where I value-bet a flush for a lot of money on the turn and he made a bad call for all his chips with a straight and lost. I get the feeling he’s a bit steamed at me or at least wants to get some ...
$2-5: An immediate call on the flop and desperate behavior after river bet
This is a $2-5 hand I played the other day. This one was interesting because my opponent's actions added up to make me suspicious enough to make a river call, in a spot that I ordinarily would have folded from a fundamental perspective. It’s also interesting because he was doing a lot of stuff (like talking and showing his neighbor his cards) that will usually mean a good hand, but in this case ...
$500 Pendleton tournament – Immediate check-behind from aggressor raises red flags
This past weekend I played in several tournaments at Wild Horse Casino in Pendleton, Oregon. I played a $200, a $300, and a $500 buy-in. I had some pretty bad luck, but I also did some stupid stuff that probably contributed to my lousy showing. For one thing, I had scheduled a 30-minute phone interview right in the middle of the $200 tournament, which caused me to be blinded and anted down from ...
Guest blog post from poker player Daniel Steinberg
I received an interesting email from Daniel Steinberg, who's an ex-poker-pro with some very good online and live results. He’s obviously got a lot of poker experience, so his opinions are worth listening to. I've included some of my responses to him in-line with his email. ...