Tell Me More

I have just uploaded four new articles to my website at www.alexscott.im. Here is one of them, a feature that made the front cover of InsidePoker Magazine in June 2008.

Note: This article was heavily edited for length when it was published in InsidePoker magazine, so I'm proud to present it in it's original form. On the plus side, the published article had some truly excellent photography of one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen in a poker magazine (sadly, she is not a player). I've tried to include some of those images in context here.

The movies have always glamorised the importance of tells poker. In the 21st James Bond movie, Casino Royale, Bond and notorious villain Le Chiffre are playing an extremely high-stakes poker tournament and the atmosphere is tense. A key hand develops – Le Chiffre has made a big bet on the river, and Bond is pondering what to do. All of a sudden, Le Chiffre’s eye starts to twitch, and he touches his hand to his temple. Bond smiles knowingly, mucks his hand, and watches as Le Chiffre turns over a full house to win the pot. We don’t know what the suave secret agent threw away, but we do know that it was Le Chiffre’s tell that helped him to decide.

A tell is any mannerism, action, or behaviour that gives you a clue about how your opponent plays or what he might be holding. In Casino Royale, Le Chiffre’s tell is his twitching eye when he holds a strong hand. In the legendary poker movie Rounders, the villain’s tell is that when he has a strong hand, he breaks open his cookie and eats it – but when he has a weak hand, he just breaks it open.

Real life tells aren’t quite like you’ll see in the movies. In this article, I want to discuss the theory behind tells, examine some misconceptions about them, discuss some common tells, and talk about ways to minimise the information that you give away yourself.

Stakes

At this stage, we should talk about two things that are incredibly important, but which are often skipped over in discussion of tells. They are the stakes and baseline behaviour.

A situation is considered ‘high stakes’ for a person when they are putting something significant at risk. For example, a criminal is in a high stakes situation if they are trying to evade detection for a crime that has a severe punishment, because they are risking their freedom (or perhaps their life). In poker, the stakes are high when the person in question is risking something which has significant value to them.

As we can see, stakes aren’t necessarily quantifiable, and vary from person to person. High stakes don’t necessarily mean lots of money is at risk, as different people have different attitudes to money and what seems like a fortune to one person may seem like a pittance to another. A player can be in a high stakes situation without risking any money at all if there’s pride and ego at stake.

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 (I did).

Conversely, don’t expect a player to display as many tells if they are accustomed to the stakes, or if they’re lower than usual.

Baseline Behaviour

A tell isn’t always something obvious. Many, if not most tells are subtle deviations from a player’s normal behaviour – what is known as their baseline behaviour. To be able to spot these types of tell, 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 that player’s eye twitches all the time anyway. 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, you may make a costly mistake.

When you sit at a table, take note of how your opponents behave in general, and compare that to situations where you know they have been bluffing or betting a big hand. This may give you a wealth of information that you can use to make better decisions later on.

Tells Before They Even Play a Hand

There are some things you can learn about a player before they even sit down. These things are all tells that can help you to play better against that person.

Take the way a person dresses, for example. A person who arrives at a poker game dressed in a sharp business suit tells you something about himself. Perhaps he’s come straight from work, or perhaps he is simply a conservative dresser – in which case, his game might be conservative too. Conversely, a person who looks like they woke up in a skip is probably going to be a sloppy player – not tight and logical. A scruffy dresser is more likely to be scruffy and careless in other areas of life, including their poker game.

Players wearing extravagant jewellery (like guys with lots of gold rings and chains) clearly have more money than sense and will likely be loose players. Players wearing sunglasses in a vain attempt to look cool are probably just egotistical amateurs – something you can exploit by putting them on tilt. And women who turn up at the poker table dressed to the nines are probably after your money, not your phone number.

The way a player stacks their chips also gives you information. A player with a sloppy stack, with different chip values mingled together and no semblance of order is probably a loose, sloppy player who doesn’t know about the importance of stack sizes. On the other hand a player with his chips in stacks of twenty and the edge spots neatly lined up is likely to be more conservative.

Voluntary and Involuntary Tells

Tells can be divided into two categories – voluntary and involuntary. A player who is giving away an involuntary tell is usually unaware that they are doing so. Involuntary tells give you information about a player’s state of mind – whether they are confident or unconfident, excited or bored, nervous or calm and so on.

Voluntary tells, however, are given away on purpose by players who are trying to manipulate you into doing what they want. Voluntary tells are sometimes attempts to cover up an in involuntary tell, and are sometimes outright attempts to deceive.

There are enough involuntary tells to fill an entire book, but I’d like to talk in general about tells of confidence and unconfidence, as these can be very useful. That’s because people are usually unconfident when they have a bad hand or are bluffing, and confident when they have something strong. I’ll also talk about two important tells of excitement that you can use to tell when somebody holds an extremely strong hand.

When a person is confident, that often manifests itself in their behaviour. A person who is confident may change their posture so that they take up a bigger space at the table, or move their hands or their entire body forward. This behaviour is engaging – it shows their interest in the pot and their confidence in what they hold. Likewise, a player who rises up in their chair, lifts their feet, nose or head, or arches their back is probably confident.

Players who are unconfident 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 in their lap. Sometimes this behaviour is subtle, but it’s definitely noticeable once you know what to look for.

People who are unconfident or agitated often try to soothe themselves in subtle ways. The behaviour that they display is known as pacifying behaviour, and it’s a good indicator that your opponent is frustrated or uncomfortable.

Think about the football player who misses an easy open-goal shot. What does he do? He covers his head with his hands and screws up his face. This is a 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 or pursing, touching the neck and face, adjusting jewellery, and wiping your hands on your legs. In general, the more neck and face touching is involved, the higher the stress and the lower the confidence.

One last good example of a pacifying behaviour is hugging yourself – that is, wrapping your arms around your body as if hugging an invisible teddy bear. 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.

Tells from the Unaware

A common 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 Kh 9h 7h. 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 he’s probably checking to see if he has a heart. That gives you some information straight away – he hasn’t got a flush already, and he doesn’t have two cards of the same suit (because people remember their suit in that case). You’ll be able to tell whether he has the heart by his subsequent behaviour – both his betting actions and his nonverbal behaviour. If the look back is accompanied by engaging behaviour, such as sitting up straight, you can bet he’s going to get involved.

Another time you see players look back at their cards is when they’ve made a big hand from out of nowhere – a hand that has taken the player by surprise. ‘Did I really just flop a set? I better check to make sure’ is how the thought process goes. For example, you’re holding pocket queens 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 of useful information. First of all, he doesn’t have a straight with the 7-8. If he did have that, he wouldn’t need to check back, and may even be scared to do so in case he gave anything away (that’s also another reason why your opponent hasn’t flopped a flush in the first example). But the jack helped his hand alright.

Most likely, your opponent will have J-10 or pocket jacks. Less likely but possible 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 and you see it on TV all the time, even from very experienced players.

One more common tell you see from players who are unaware goes like this. You raise preflop, and your opponent calls. As soon as the flop is dealt, your opponent briefly glances down at her 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. You can play the rest of the hand accordingly – if you’ve missed the flop, now might be the time to fold.

Lastly, an opponent whose hand is shaking subtly as they handle their chips probably has a strong hand (provided that they don’t normally shake – but you know this, because you’ve been studying their baseline behaviour, right?) This is often interpreted the other way, as a sign of nervousness – but in reality, it’s a sign of excitement. Don’t call the shaky bet!

Voluntary Tells

The other category of tells, and perhaps the most interesting, is voluntary tells. In other words, your opponent is giving you information on purpose, and your job is to figure out what that information means, and then do exactly the opposite of what your opponent wants you to do.

Most voluntary tells are acts, designed to give out false information about the player’s hand. The most common way that people do this is to act in a way as to convey the opposite of their hand’s actual strength. When they’re strong, they act weak. When they’re weak, they act strong.

Mike Caro, who came up with the ‘strong when weak, weak when strong’ idea, devoted most of a book to various acting tells. Lets look at a few of the most common.

Looking away is a particularly reliable tell if your opponent is also following the action out of the corner of their eye

Looking Away: A common way that a player acts weak when they are strong is to feign disinterest in the hand by looking away from you. They want to appear as unthreatening as possible, and encourage you to put money in the pot. Don’t be tempted.

Staring at the flop with chips in hand - please don't bet into me!

Staring at the Flop: This is a way of acting strong when weak. By feigning interest in the flop – ‘oooh, that flop looks nice, what shall I do?’ - your opponent is hoping that you will check to them.

Should I bet or not, who knows? I've only got the nuts

Gestures: Any exaggerated gesture that your opponent makes is probably an act. For example, a player who shrugs before throwing his chips in is acting unsure, and probably has a good hand. A player who acts as though he’s going to fold when it gets to his turn is probably going to raise. And a player who reaches for her chips threateningly is probably not going to call or bet.

The dwell-up - My hand isn't giving me an easy decision, honest

The Dwell Up: A player who takes an inordinate amount of time to make a decision, then raises, is probably holding a strong hand. The long dwell-up is an act, trying to convey that the raise was a difficult decision and perhaps his hand isn’t that strong after all. Don’t fall for it.

Staring at you is an attempt at intimidation - but how could you be intimidated by this face?

Staring at You: This is the opposite of looking away. By staring at you, the player is trying to intimidate you, and appear threatening. Why? Because he doesn’t want you to bet.

Occasionally, a player will try to confuse you by giving you a voluntary tell that is truthful, but this is much more 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 see their hand.

A couple of years ago I was playing a game with friends. On the river, I had nothing but king high, and my opponent put out a bet of close to the size of the pot. The bet seemed strange, so I asked my opponent ‘Can you beat king high?’. Very quickly, he answered ‘no’. At this point many people would fold, figuring that their opponent must be lying. After all, why would he tell you that he couldn’t beat king high if he wanted you to fold? But I called, and won the pot.

Jamie Gold exploited this tendency in his opponents to great effect on his way to winning the 2006 World Series of Poker Main Event. Often, Jamie would tell his opponents that he was bluffing, and they would fold. Likewise, he would tell them he held the nuts, and they would call him (often with very little). See the box below for a great example.

So how do you tell an act from 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, is slumped back in their chair, turned away from the table, and has their cards far 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 to Use Tells

So now you know why tells occur, you know how to spot them, and you know how to interpret some of the most common tells in the poker world. But once you have this information, how do you use it?

If your opponent has made a big bet on the river, and a tell has given away that they are bluffing, you might be tempted to call instantly and rub their face in the fact that they gave away their hand. Some people do act like this, but they’re just hurting themselves, because they’ll never be able to use that tell again. Once your opponent knows that you’ve spotted a tell of theirs, you can bet they’re going to try their hardest not to give away any further information.

So don’t tell them! Once you’ve spotted the tell, wait a little while before you act. That way, you can use the same tell over and over again against the same player.

One thing to be wary of is assigning too much importance to a single tell. Lets 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?

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).

Lastly, 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.

Likewise, advanced players are better at hiding their tells, and are much more likely to throw out reverse tells to confuse you (more about reverse tells in a while). While pretty much everyone gives away tells occasionally, against advanced players those tells will be much more confusing and much less useful.

How Good are You at Spotting Tells?

Most people aren’t very aware of the nonverbal behaviour of others, at least on a conscious level. While unconsciously we’re responding to the signals of those around us, consciously we don’t spot the subtle behaviours that cause those responses.

I did research of my own into tells and deception while at university, and learned a lot about the subject. Many people make similar mistakes or have similar incorrect attitudes about non verbal behaviour.

• Most Poker Players Overrate Their Ability to Detect Tells: The majority of people think they’re good at spotting lies, and the majority of poker players think they are good at spotting tells and reading opponents. In truth, that simply isn’t the case. Humans simply aren’t prepared, by evolution or everyday life, to spot deception and subtle non-verbal behaviour in others. It’s a skill that must be learned.

• Most Poker Players Look For The Wrong Clues: You might have heard that if a person covers their mouth or looks away, they’re lying. In actual fact, these everyday ‘tells’ are extremely unreliable, and often plain wrong. In poker, the same applies. The majority of people either don’t know what to look for, or look for the wrong thing. Now that you’ve read this article, you won’t be one of those people!
  
  Incidentally, because your opponents are probably looking for the wrong clues, you should reinforce their behaviour. If they spot a bluff of yours, it’s probably a coincidence but you can convince them it was because you gave away a tell – and this might cause them to make mistakes against you in future.

• Women’s Intution: Is as silly as it sounds. Contrary to popular belief, scientific research shows that women are no better than men at picking up on nonverbal clues. Likewise, the ability to detect tells does not vary significantly among different cultures. Poker really is a level playing field.

• Most Poker Players Overrate the Importance of Bluffing: My own research showed that poker players, when presented with video footage of a person playing a poker hand, tended to think that the person in the video was bluffing much more often than they actually were. My theory is that big bluffs and fancy plays stand out much more often in our minds than run-of-the-mill hands where somebody bets and takes it down. Our memory is selective, and we remember hands that are exciting more than we perhaps should.

Hiding Your Own Tells

One of the things you might be concerned about now you’ve got this far is hiding your own tells. First of all, a word of caution. If you know that you’ve given away something with a tell, don’t then try to cover it up. That cover-up is a voluntary tell in itself, and simply serves to draw more attention to the behaviour you’re trying to hide.

A good example that comes up frequently is a speech play. It’s a big pot, and on the river you’re pondering a call. ‘I’ve got a big hand,’ your opponent says, his hand shaking as he puts his chips into the pot. But then, he sits back in his chair, puts his hands in his lap, and says ‘Or am I bluffing?’.

Don’t worry, he’s not bluffing. The first behaviour was genuine, and the second was an attempt to cover up that behaviour and confuse you. Don’t do this yourself. If you realise that you’ve given a tell away, simply stop doing it and hope your opponent hasn’t noticed.

There are two approaches to hiding your tells, which I call ‘white noise’ and ‘no signal’ respectively. The white noise approach involves making so many unusual actions and giving away so many tells that your opponent can’t pick out the useful information (or distinguish the signal from the noise, if you like). This approach was pioneered by Mike Caro, and you see it employed in the modern game by Gus Hansen (who is constantly looking puzzled and pulling faces) and to some extent Daniel Negreanu.

The second approach, no signal, simply involves not giving away any information at all. You don’t move, except to put your chips in. You take the same amount of time to take every action and to make every decision – the idea being that if you do everything the same way, you won’t give away any information to your opponents. You’ll see this approach used by Phil Hellmuth and Chris Ferguson – and even 2007 World Series of Poker winner Jerry Yang.

Which approach you take yourself will depend on what sort of person you are. Choose the one that best fits your personality. If you’re exuberant and loud at the table by nature, use that to camouflage the information that you give away. If you’re a quiet type, choose the no signal approach, as that will be easiest for you.

However, the most important thing you can do to cut down on the number of tells you give away is to lower the stakes. That doesn’t necessarily mean playing for less money, but making yourself comfortable in the game in whatever ways you can. If you’re playing a tougher game than you should be, quit. If you’re risking more money in the game than you’re comfortable with, go find another game. The lower the stakes, the less tells you’ll give away.

Reverse Tells

Reverse tells are a tell that you intentionally give away, hoping that your opponent will pick up on it, not realise that you gave it away on purpose, and be tricked into making the wrong decision because they overvalued the tell’s importance. For example, you’re playing Hold’em and on the river you make the nut flush and move all-in. Your opponent is thinking about calling, so you want to encourage him to do so in whatever way you can. You freeze in your chair (a tell of unconfidence), then start to stare at your opponent (a strong when weak tell). Your opponent spots this and calls, then storms away from the table as his chips are pushed to you.

You must be very careful when throwing out a reverse tell. An expert opponent who is watching you closely should be able to spot the difference between a tell that you feign and a genuine tell, because there will be a conflict between the behaviour you’re trying to display and your actual emotional state.

Nevertheless, reverse tells can work well, particularly against opponents who think they are stronger players than they actually are. Several years ago, I remember playing against a cocky student at St. Andrews University, who was constantly staring me down. The next time I was in a hand against him, I had raised preflop with A-K and missed the flop. I put out a fairly standard continuation bet, and my opponent started to stare at me. So I threw out a classic tell of strength, looking away into the distance. My opponent folded his pocket jacks (an overpair to the board) face up, and looked smug as I collected his chips. ‘Wow, nice laydown’ I said. If only he knew.

How Useful Are Tells?

Tells are a useful and important addition to your poker arsenal, but to be completely honest, they’re overrated. The movies present an unrealistic view of tells, and poker TV shows and books exaggerate their importance.

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.

Further Reading

There are only two books that are really worth reading about tells – and both are essential parts of a serious poker player’s library. Both books expand on concepts I’ve discussed in this article and go into extra detail that I couldn’t. I can’t recommend them enough. They are:

‘Caro’s Book of Poker Tells’ (Mike Caro, Cardoza Publishing)
‘Read ‘em and Reap’ (Joe Navarro, Collins)

Jamie Gold Boxout

It’s down to the last four tables of the World Series of Poker Main Event. Jamie Gold looks down at Kd 10d, and raises to 175,000. Cocky young pro / would be rapper Prahlad Friedman calls with 7d 7c. The flop comes 4d 2c 2s, and Jamie Gold bets 300,000. Prahlad calls. The turn is the As and both players check. The river comes the 3c. Jamie Gold bets 750,000.

‘I heard a story about you making a nice bluff. You bet about 750, I think’, says Prahlad.
‘You caught me. Please call. You caught me.’ replies Jamie.
‘You showed a king high that time’.
‘You’ve got a good read on me. Man, I can’t believe you’ve got me! I don’t even want to watch.’

Prahlad folds. Jamie told him exactly what he had, and Prahlad didn’t recognise what was happening. Friedman was eliminated shortly thereafter, and Gold went on to become the most unpopular WSOP champion of recent years.