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 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 ...
Limit player who holds chips defensively
Live fixed-limit, full-ring Hold'em hands that interest me enough to spend much time analyzing them are pretty rare, just because so many of the decisions are pretty straight-forward. I've got a hand here from a few days ago that I've been thinking a while about. It's a hand I probably could have played a bit better and that seems obvious in hindsight. The hand involves a couple of common tells so ...
Most useful tells in limit poker
I’ve been playing more limit hold'em lately, and I’ve put some thought into the tells that are most useful at limit versus the most useful ones at no-limit. Obviously there’s a lot less psychological pressure in limit, which makes for less tells. And the regular players, even the horrible ones, are accustomed to the common situations of the game and therefore give away less information. But ...