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You’re playing poker and starting to bet the river when you see your opponent’s hand travel over to his chips and hover over them, almost as if he’s subtly implying that he might be interested in betting or calling. This kind of behavior is often done in a defensive way, by players with weaker, vulnerable hands; I’ve referred to this as “defensive chip handling” in my books/videos. Some points about this:
- Reaching for chips when waiting for an opponent to act, or prior to checking, usually signals weakness. A player who seems to express interest in putting their chips in play is often doing that defensively.
- Watch for subtle versions. More amateur players may conspicuously reach for or hold their chips, while more experienced players, if they have this pattern, might merely touch their chips or move a hand toward their stack. The more experienced the player, the more you must correlate the behavior first and see if there’s a pattern there.
- Even when weak, they may still call. Some players will still call you after displaying this behavior.
- This behavior makes raises much less likely. The key practical value is being more comfortable making thin value bets and being less worried about a raise.
For more detail on this, I’ll give you an excerpt from Reading Poker Tells:
GRABBING CHIPS DEFENSIVELY
A player who acts as if he is going to call you is probably weak.
You’re playing limit Hold’em. You’re heads-up on the river against a mediocre player. You’ve got A♦ 8♦. The board is A♠ T♠ 7♣ 2♦ 3♦. You’ve bet the flop and the turn. From the way the hand’s been played, you think it’s even-money whether your opponent has a Ten or a better Ace.
You contemplate a value bet. As you do so, you play with your chips. You notice your opponent grabbing his chips as if he’s ready to call your bet. This is an important clue; you know that this player, like many players, makes this intention-to-call gesture only when he is fairly weak. You bet your hand and he calls with King-Ten, which is exactly the kind of hand you expected to see.
Think about it this way: why would a player with a strong hand give you any indication that he was going to call you if you bet? This is almost always a ploy designed to slow you down and discourage a bet.
The player on the left is contemplating a bet. The player on the right is physically announcing his intention to call a bet. This will generally indicate weakness. The player may or may not actually call, depending on their personal tendencies, but there is very little chance they will be raising.
The most amateur players will hold out their chips in a very obvious way, basically stating that they’re ready to call your bet. With more experienced players, the tell is more subtle than this. The more subtle variations of this tell are not an act; rather, they are an instinctual physical reaction to being threatened. Usually you’ll see it as someone counting out chips kind of absent-mindedly or someone with their hand poised over their chips as if ready to pick them up. This tell can include a wide range of very subtle hand and arm movements. Once you get better at spotting this tell, you can even try to induce it by just subtly reaching for your chips and watching to see if your opponent’s hand moves slightly towards his chips, or maybe lifts his chips off his stack.
Sometimes players attempting to discourage your bet in this way will fold if bet into. Sometimes they will call the bet. You should try to take note of the situation in which a player exhibits this tell. Does he display this tell when he’s leaning toward folding? Or does he display it when he’s leaning toward calling? Players will usually have specific tendencies in this regard. Limit players are more prone to showing this tell and following it up with an actual call. No-limit players are usually more cognizant and don’t display this tell; if they do perform this tell, though, it will usually mean they will be folding to a bet, not calling.
This is the same kind of tell shown in the last picture, only more subtle. Instead of grabbing his chips in an obvious way, the player on the right is just touching his chips. These types of tells can be even more subtle than this.
One thing is pretty certain with this tell, and it’s the most important point: whether a player plans to call or fold when you bet, if they’re performing this tell they will virtually never be raising. Knowing that a player with this tell isn’t going to raise will let you narrow down their hand range a lot. Not having to fear a raise also lets you feel much more comfortable when value-betting.
Post-bet version
I occasionally even see a post-bet version of this tell. Someone will bet with a vulnerable hand and then hold their chips out subtly, implying that they’re not afraid of more action, which usually means they don’t want more action.
Here’s an excerpt from Exploiting Poker Tells:
Hand #60: Defensive chip handling from waiting-to-act player
$20-40 Limit Hold’em cash game
This is a $10-20 limit Hold’em kill pot, so it’s $20-40. The “killer” is in the big blind; he puts up $20 instead of $10.
I have 2♣ 2♦ in early position. There are only 8 players at the table and I notice two players behind me folding or leaving the table. I raise. I get two callers behind me.
The flop is 9♣ 8♦ 4♠.
As I think for a moment, the player two behind me acts in a defensive way: he grabs his chips and assembles them out in front of his stack, as if ready to call. I’ve played a lot with this player and he’s very predictable. He often acts in agitated ways like this, and these behaviors are almost always weak, trying to discourage action.
This encourages me to bet. The first player folds and the defensive player calls.
The turn is the 9♦, putting two diamonds out.
The player is still holding his chips out, as if ready to call. This is not meaningful here, though. Once a player takes a pose, it doesn’t mean much when that pose is just “carried over” from the previous round. He could have hit his card, he might have missed: there’s not any new information. All we really know is that he started doing it on the flop, so he was probably weak then.
I bet again and this time he raises me immediately.
I don’t think he has a lone 9 in his hand; he called a raise cold, pre-flop. Also, his defensive flop behavior is highly correlated to weak hands. At the same time, he’s not an aggressive player, and usually when he raises, he does have a strong hand. I end up folding without giving it as much thought as I should have.
After I fold, he shows the hand that I quickly realize is the only hand that makes sense with all the information available: A♦ K♦. He cold-called a raise pre-flop, acted defensively as he called on the flop, and then the turn encouraged him to raise.
His hand actually becomes a lot more transparent with the turn raise; more so than a call could ever make it. In other words: there are plenty of made hands he could have called me with on the turn, but very few that a straightforward, non-aggressive player would raise me with there. With his flop defensiveness and call, there is one hand that makes the most sense: A♦ K♦.
This hand reinforces the importance of taking behavior into account alongside fundamental hand reading and strategy. It also shows the importance of taking your time to think things through.
Zachary Elwood is the author of the Reading Poker Tells trilogy of books, which has been translated into eight languages and sold more than 48,000 copies. See more frequently asked poker tells questions.