Poker tells are any mannerism, action, or behaviour that gives you clue about your opponent
The movies have always glamorised the importance of tells in poker. In Casino Royale, Bond and notorious villain Le Chiffre are playing a high-stakes poker tournament and Le Chiffre has made a big bet on the river. All of a sudden, his eye starts to twitch and he touches his temple. Our hero smiles knowingly, mucks his hand and watches as Le Chiffre turns over a full house to win the pot.
Real life tells aren’t quite so obvious. Most are subtle deviations from a player’s normal behaviour – known as their baseline behaviour. To be able to spot such subtle tells, you have to know how a player normally behaves – and that requires a lot of observation.
For example, it’s no good knowing that a player’s eye twitches when they have the nuts if their eye twitches all the time. They are just as likely to twitch when they are bluffing and if you misinterpret this behaviour as a tell of strength because you haven’t studied your opponent’s baseline behaviour, then you may make a costly mistake.
The other thing to bear in mind is the stakes involved. A situation is considered ‘high stakes’ when a player puts something significant at risk. But high stakes isn’t necessarily about the money. Pride and ego also play a part; a player can be in a high stakes situation without risking any money at all.
In general, the higher the stakes, the more likely it is that a person will display a tell – particularly if that tell is involuntary. So, while you might not show many tells in your home game, you could become a veritable tell machine if you play in a televised tournament with a big prize (like I did).
Involuntary Tells
Tells can be divided into two categories: voluntary and involuntary. A player who is giving away an involuntary tell is usually unaware they are doing so. Involuntary tells give you information about a player’s state of mind, for example, whether they are confident or nervous, excited or bored. Voluntary tells are deliberate attempts at deception, and we’ll look at these later.
There are enough involuntary tells to fill an entire book, but I’d like to talk in general about tells of confidence, as these can be very useful. People usually lack confidence when they have a bad hand or are bluffing, while remaining confident when they have something strong.
When a person is confident, that often manifests itself in their behaviour. They may change their posture so that they take up a bigger space at the table, or move their hands or their entire body forward. Likewise, a player who rises up in their chair, lifts their feet, nose or head or arches their back is probably feeling confident. This behaviour is engaging – it shows their interest in the pot and their confidence in what they hold.
Players who lack confidence often do the opposite – they disengage and move away from the table, or slump in their chair – perhaps putting their hands in their pockets or on their lap. Sometimes this behaviour is subtle, but it’s definitely noticeable once you know what to look for. They will often try to soothe themselves in subtle ways. The behaviour they display is known as ‘pacifying behaviour’ and it’s a good indicator your opponent is frustrated or uncomfortable.
Think about the football player who misses an open goal. What does he do? He covers his head with his hands and screws up his face. This is an act of pacifying behaviour – as are most ‘eye blocking’ behaviours. Even something as simple as a player adjusting his glasses may be an example of eye blocking.
Other examples of pacifying and low confidence behaviour are hair stroking, nail biting, lip biting, touching the neck and face, adjusting jewellery and wiping your hands on your legs. In general, the more neck and face touching, the higher the stress and the lower the confidence.
One final example of pacifying behaviour is hugging yourself – that is, wrapping your arms around your body. Indeed, this is Phil Hellmuth’s famous tell; one he displayed at the final table of a WPT event just a few years ago, which was broadcast to millions.
Another important involuntary tell you’ll see from amateur players is looking back at cards. It happens all the time. Let’s say you’re playing hold’em and the flop comes K?-9?-7?. You have A-K, with no hearts and the player across the table from you looks back at his cards. What does that mean?
Well, it might seem obvious, but your opponent is probably checking to see if he has a heart. You’ll be able to tell whether he has the heart by his subsequent behaviour – both his betting actions and his non-verbal approach.
If the look back is accompanied by engaging behaviour, such as sitting up straight, then you can bet he’s going to get involved in the hand.
Another time you see players look back at their cards is when they’ve made a big hand from out of nowhere. ‘Did I really just flop a set? I better check to make sure’ is how the thought process goes. For example, you’re holding Q-Q and the flop is 10-9-2. You bet the flop and are called. The turn is a Jack, and your opponent looks back at his cards.
That look tells you a lot. First of all, he doesn’t have a straight with the 7-8. If he did, he wouldn’t need to check back and may be scared to do so in case he gave anything away. But the Jack helped his hand. Most likely, he has J-10 or J-J. Less likely is a hand like Q-10, which flopped top pair and made an open-ended straight draw with the Jack.
In any case, the look back has allowed you to greatly narrow his range of hands and you can play the turn and river accordingly. This tell is extremely common; you see it on TV all the time, even from very experienced players.
One more common tell goes like this: you raise pre-flop and your opponent calls. As soon as the flop is dealt, your opponent briefly glances down at their chips. That glance tells you that your opponent is thinking about betting – even more so if it’s followed by a sly glance at your chips as well.
Finally, an opponent whose hand is shaking subtly as they handle their chips probably has a strong hand (provided they don’t normally shake – but you know this already, because you’ve been studying their baseline behaviour, right?) A common mistake is often made here, as the shaking is interpreted the other way, as a sign of nervousness. But in reality, this is a sign of excitement. You need to be very wary of this. Don’t call the shaky bet unless you feel confident that you have studied your opponent’s baseline behaviour.
Voluntary Tells
The other category of tells – and perhaps the most interesting – is voluntary tells. This is where your opponent is giving you information on purpose. Most voluntary tells are acts, designed to give out false information about the player’s hand. Your job is to figure out what that information means, and then do exactly the opposite of what your opponent wants you to do.
The most common voluntary tell players do is to act weak when in reality, they are strong. Mike Caro, who came up with this theory, devoted most of a book to various acting tells. Let’s look at a few of the most common.
Occasionally, a player will try to confuse you by giving you a voluntary tell that is truthful – but this is very rare. Your opponent is hoping you will think ‘why would he give me this information if it was the truth? He must be lying’, and then do exactly the opposite of what you would do if you could actually see their hand.
So how do you tell an act from someone’s genuine behaviour? Well, when a person is being deceptive, there will be a conflict between the behaviour or emotional state they are trying to convey and their actual behaviour or emotional state. It’s the conflict that gives them away.
For an example, let’s go back to the looking away tell. If your opponent is looking away, slumped back in their chair, turned away from the table with their cards far enough away from them where the dealer could just scoop them up, their disinterest is probably genuine. But if they’re sitting up straight, have one hand on their cards and their body is turned towards the table, but the head away, it’s probably an act and you should be careful.
How Useful Are Tells?
One thing to be wary of is assigning too much importance to a single tell. Let’s say you’re playing a hand against a solid opponent. They check-raised the flop, then bet out big on the turn and the river. You have just one pair and are about to fold, when all of a sudden your opponent sits back from the table and folds his arms – disengaging behaviour. Should you change your decision from fold to call, or from fold to raise? The answer is no, probably not.
Tells should be used as clues to help support your decision, but will very rarely tip the balance from one extreme to the other. If all of the other evidence – such as betting patterns and your knowledge of your opponent’s playing style – point to a fold, you should very rarely let a single tell tip the balance to a raise.
A single tell in isolation is unreliable. Some are more reliable than others, but in all cases tells are much more useful if you spot several – all of which support each other. So, for example, in the hand above, if your opponent sat back from the table and folded his arms (disengaging behaviour), but also stared at you and shrugged before he made the bet, you could make a much more convincing case for calling (especially if your knowledge of his playing style told you that he liked to bluff a lot).
Finally, remember that tells are most useful against intermediate players. If you’re playing against beginners who don’t know the value of their own hand, they might give away tells of strength, when actually their hand is very weak (simply because they have misread their hand or don’t understand its strength). For example, you might see a beginner giving away tells of strength and fold, only to discover that your opponent held just an inside straight draw.
Tells are great if they supplement information that you already have, and they can help you do the right thing when the decision is close. But they have their downsides. Tells are never 100% reliable, particularly if found in isolation, and if not supported by other complementary information.
Betting patterns, probability, and the tendencies of your opponent will always be the key factors that you use to make most poker decisions. You’ll never be able to play a poker hand using tells alone. However, tells can help you to win that extra pot here and there – and the little extra money you win each session really adds up at the end of the year.
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