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It’s a common perception in the general public that a big part of poker, and a big part of poker tells, is sniffing out when an opponent is bluffing. But the truth is that it’s quite hard to get a confident read that someone is bluffing. The reasons for this are:
- Most players making large, important bets are trying to be stoic and unreadable, whether they’re value-betting or bluffing. This means that, in general, it will be hard to distinguish a player’s stoic behavior when bluffing from their standard stoic behavior.
- This point applies even more for serious poker players, who will have played enough and learned enough to understand the common ways information can leak behaviorally, and be quite good at being stoic (or, if not stoic, behaviorally balanced).
This point actually maps over to deception detection research, which shows that nonverbal behaviors aren’t useful for detecting deception. For the same reasons it’s hard to use nonverbal behavior to spot a bluff, it’s hard to use nonverbal behavior to tell if someone is making a deceptive statement in non-game, real-world scenarios. (This analogy exists even though a bluff in a game, in my view, is not deception; it is an allowed game decision, and game decisions can be made dispassionately and logically, and there is also no verbal statement involved, and verbal statements are what most deception detection research examines. Also, some bets cannot be classified as simply bluffs or value-bets. Whether a bluff is deception or not is debatable, of course, but the fact that one can make a case that it is not deception at least helps show the differences in these areas. Read more thoughts on why poker tells have little relation to deception detection.)
This truth about the difficulty of spotting bluffs is one that few sellers of poker tells products want to directly tell you (just as general “behavior experts” want to deflect from the fact that body language is basically practically useless in high-stakes environments). It’s known that many people who seek out poker tells training want to know how to spot when someone is bluffing — just as many people who seek out general “behavior expert” training want to know how to spot lies and assess credibility. There exist major incentives to not reveal this basic difficulty.
Having gone through that important disclaimer, I’ll say that one of the most important categories of poker tells are tells of relaxation and/or happiness when someone is making a big bet. Instead of focusing on trying to spot bluffs, one should be trying to spot tells that someone is deviating from their normal, stoic patterns due to greater-than-average relaxation. As I said, bluffs are hard to pick out because a bettor’s impulse to be as stoic as possible is camouflaged by all the other stoic behavior they are, on average, trying to do when betting. But some players, in some spots, will sometimes have clues as to being especially relaxed and carefree when betting.
And these can be quite obvious behaviors (like carefree, expressive, dynamic smiles or laughter) or they can be quite subtle behaviors (more relaxed eye movements; loose chip handling; delayed, hesitating bet gathering and placements). The more obvious examples can be useful for “cold reads” (with no player history). The more subtle examples will only be useful with some player-specific observation over time, to get a sense of what’s normal and abnormal for them. (Learn about some big-bet tells of relaxation.)
Again, such reads won’t be common! In most big-bet spots, most bettors will be trying to be stoic and unreadable. It’s just that sometimes you will be able to get clues that someone is likely relaxed.
Note also that this pattern has almost no analogy to non-game, real-world situations. In an interrogation/interview or negotiation, you don’t have these discrete, formalized game-like spots where someone goes from doing well and sitting pretty in one spot (and has those attendant positive feelings), and then a few minutes later is doing something that stresses most people out (like making a big bluff). (Learn more about why game and non-game situations are so different in terms of reading and using behavior.)
Also note that doing some player-specific observation and trying to pick out indicators of relaxation when betting, can have the result of making it possible to spot bluffs. E.g., if you have studied a player a good amount over time and feel you’ve noticed some small things he does that equate to relaxation when he’s value-betting, then when you see that player not doing any of those things and remaining completely stoic and betting completely neutrally and straightforwardly, that can help inform a read that that player is bluffing. The more player-specific info you have, and the more imbalanced that player is between their value-bets and bluffs, the more possible such a read becomes.
And then in practice, you would often be combining such reads with other more fundamental strategic and hand history observations; e.g., their line in the hand being a bit strange and making bluffs more likely. Especially when playing strong players and especially for big-bet spots, it’ll usually be multiple factors that result in changing a decision (and this is what I’ve also found when consulting for high-stakes players). Basically, it’s rare to find yourself thinking, “I’m confident this player is bluffing based on their behavior, therefore I call” (whereas you will fairly often find yourself thinking, “I’m confident this player is value-betting based on their behavior, therefore I fold”).
A couple more caveats that add to the difficulty of getting a read that someone is bluffing, though:
- It’s quite hard to get reads of these sorts before the river (or the final card of whatever sort). This is because when there are still cards to come, people can feel quite ambiguous and ambivalent about their hands. E.g., someone shoving on the flop with a draw knows they have a decent chance of winning, so getting a read in such a spot is difficult. This is especially true pre-flop.
- Most large bets are significantly likely to be value bets. This makes it even harder to sniff out a bluff. Even if you get a reliable clue, after studying a player over time, that they are now more likely than average to be bluffing, that may not be actionable simply because you know that they are, from a fundamental strategy perspective, much more likely to be value-betting than bluffing. Put another way, it can be hard for a behavioral read that someone’s bluffing % has increased to overcome the sheer statistical probability that they are value-betting.
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.