Some Thoughts On Tells

To the inexperienced poker player tells are the essence of the game. Poker has gotten a lot of its reputation from old westerns where the bad guy would express some kind of physical tell whenever he was bluffing or had a monster hand. To the TV audience, poker is all about looks.

And in a sense this view of poker is correct. A lot of the skill in poker lies in the ability to accurately assess the strength of the hand(s) of your opponent(s). And this skill involves the ability to collect and accurately process the information available on his hand strength, be that a physical tell, subconsciously registered information or information gained from his actions and previous betting patterns. From this way of looking at it, tells become a lot more than just subconscious physical mannerisms. A tell is any information that is available to you in assessing the strength of your opponents hand and according to my experience, the physical tells are quite uncommon compared to some of the other types of tells. Therefore, it will also hurt your game if you are overly focused on spotting physical tells at the expense of collecting other information available.

Physical Tells

One major difference between no limit and fixed limit hold'em is that a physical tell can be exploited to deprive an opponent for his whole stack in no limit, whereas you can only exploit it to gain a couple of extra bets in fixed limit. For that reason alone, physical tells are not all that important in fixed limit. In my experience the most frequent and most important tell for limit hold'em is people who show you whether they will play or fold out of turn by how they hold their cards. If you have one or two players exerting this tell immediately behind you, you will be able to play a lot of late position hands from mid position, as you are effectively in late position when you know they will fold behind you.

Subconscious "Feel"

The human being is equipped with a vast number of sensors that allow us to run fast when we sense danger. When you hear screaming tires nearby you try to get away without needing to think. And in my experience we collect a whole lot of information on your surroundings on the subconscious level, and we react on it too. For instance we react stronger to the pitch of voice (reading the emotional status of the speaker) then we do on the actually content of what is said. I believe that this type of information can be of vital importance in poker, and constitutes a large part of what is normally regarded as "feel" for your opponent. The thing about this type of information is that you cannot process it on the conscious level. To exploit it fully you must learn to trust your gut feeling, even when your brain screams danger. It also takes a lot of guts to trust your gut feeling, as you will not be able to understand the reason for its recommendations rationally, given the fact that it all comes in at a subconscious level.

Betting Patterns

Most of the time, the only information you have on your opponents hand is his betting pattern. Betting patterns are the most common and most valuable type of information available to the poker player. Yet most players are rather sloppy in collecting and processing the information available. The more betting patterns you remember from your opponent, the more accurately you will be able to assess how he is thinking and what he is capable of, and this information is vital when you have to assess the meaning of a bet or raise or call from him.

How To Avoid Giving Away Tells

So much for discovering and exploiting tells. Inexperienced players often spend most of their mental resources fearing that others will pick up tells on them when they play live. The fact is that everybody gives tells. I've seen Phil Ivey do it on TV! So as a human being you must accept the fact that you give away information. You can, however, with relatively little effort distort some of that information. First of all, you should realize that any piece of information you discover on your opponent, you might be giving away yourself. There is no shame in giving away tells, as long as you are aware of it. Sometimes I realize that I gave away a physical tell right after it happens. I then proceed to assess whether it was noticed, and if so, I proceed to assess what this particular opponent is likely to think that it means. All of a sudden this tell has given me a lot of knowledge about what he thinks in this hand, and I can take appropriate measures in how I play my hand. Sometimes this will allow me to make an aggressive play on a scare card, if this helps the hand I know he puts me on. Another strategy is to habitually do the tell when you have no reason to do it. For instance I often look a second time when I have a big pair, as I want to see what suits my cards were. Knowing this, I sometimes do it with suited cards or any other hand I chose to play. Finally, I never make my mind up completely before it's my turn to act. I remember a specific hand where somebody read a tell on me, but where my original intentions got overruled by my gut feeling when it was my turn to act. So even though he picked up the tell correctly, it no longer gave him any useful information on my thinking.

In short - you avoid giving away information about being very aware of your own actions, and by making it a routine always to look at yourself from your opponent's seat. Just as you should exploit any weakness you find in your opponent, you should investigate whether you make the same faults, and take appropriate precautionary measures if you do.

Thanks to Leigh Lightfoot-Martin for proof reading this article.

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