Tells: Reading Your Opponents

See also

A tell is a hint that a player gives you as to what the strength of his hand may be - either through the way he bets, or the way he physically behaves around the table. Successfully interpreting the tells of your opponents will make a huge difference in any given session you have at a poker table.

It almost goes without saying that in order to watch for tells in the first place, you need to be watching people. This tends to be easiest to do when you're not playing in a hand, but rather just sitting back and taking it all in. Although the other players not in the hand are watching television or reading the sports pages, you should be keeping an eye on your opponents. See how they face each other and how they react as they win or lose, bet or fold.

Also, you need to get out of the habit of immediately looking at your cards as soon as they're dealt, as well as the community cards as they're exposed. Instead you should watch the players around the table and see how they react as they see the cards for the first time.

Of course people know you're looking for a tell and will intentionally try to throw you off. What you need to figure out, then, is who is actually inadvertently showing a tell and who is merely trying to make your poker experience even more confusing.

Because people associate bluffing with lying, they tend to interpret that as meaning you should act in the opposite manner to what people would expect. And this is the biggest tell of all, especially in beginning-to-intermediate play: Players will most often intentionally act as though their hands are the opposite of what they are.

A player who is bluffing will bet in a very aggressive fashion and stare you right in the eyes. A player with a strong hand will casually lay a bet and look away. This tends to be especially true of players who have cut their Hold'em teeth on the Internet - they may have thousands of hours of play, but they've never sat in front of another human being to do it. They have no idea how to act.

Another thing to keep a close eye out for is someone who is physically shaking as she goes to place a bet. A shaking player always is holding a good starting hand or has made a big hand on the board - it's nearly impossible to fake the nervous rattle of someone with a great hand. When you see it, it's the real thing, and you're in trouble. Fold and ask questions later.

Shaking hands typically indicate a crushing hand, but you can pick up a surprisingly larger amount of information from watching people's hands:

  • Many people will hold their cards in a certain way (for them) if they're planning on folding a hand. This gives you a chance to look behind you on any given betting action to see how many callers you might get.
  • People thinking of betting will often fondle their chips before it is their turn to bet. Many intermediate players do this to make you think they're either going to bet or call, in an effort to get you to not bet because they would actually fold otherwise - yet another version of acting in a way that's opposite of how they're actually thinking).
  • People who suddenly hit big hands, especially on the flop, will often flinch with their hands.
  • People who recheck their hole cards after an all-suited flop (for example, all spades) were not holding two spades to begin with or they wouldn't be rechecking.
  • People who check their hole cards twice pre-flop (or give their hole cards an exceedingly long stare) often have a very big pair. For some reason, people with large pocket pairs need to look at them again.
  • One signal for checking is to tap the table when it's your turn to bet; some people, as hard as this is to believe, will tap it one way for a true check (say with just an index finger), but do another (say, rap the table with a fist) if they intend on check-raising.
  • In No-Limit, players who are becoming short stacked will often count out their stack relative to the size of the blinds.
  • What they're doing is figuring out how many big blinds their stack represents, and on a surprising number of occasions you'll find these people pushing all-in soon afterward. Anytime you see someone counting out a stack in such a fashion, you should be leery of the all-in play behind you when you're first to act. Be sure to play tighter in these situations so you won't be afraid to call the raise.