An Introduction To Reading Poker Tells
Before we discuss specific tells, I wanted to provide a brief introduction to reading poker tells. Reading tells is a considerable piece of our overall poker strategy. When you sit down to play poker, observe your opponents. Watch their behavior when they have strong hands, weak hands. How do they put their chips in the pot? Where are they placing their cards? How do they sit, elbows on the table, slouched in the chair, sitting up straight? How are they looking at other players or are they looking at their phone? Reading a book? Work on establishing a baseline for each player. One key to picking up on tells is a change in their baseline behavior.
The reality is a lot of players don’t look for tells, therefore they are not aware that other players may be observing them, so they make little effort to conceal their feelings or intentions. These kinds of tells you may see here are not emotionally based, rather they are born out of mental laziness or perhaps some players believe they can’t be read. I know some of them.
Then there are the tells that result from emotion, be that anger, excitement, fear, or perhaps they have a huge hand and are totally relaxed. These kinds of tells are usually manifested when large bets and/or large pots are involved. You won’t see a lot of tells when the bets/pots are small.
How Reliable Are Tells?
First, we have to understand that we must compare their tells to their baseline behavior. We also must know in what context is the tell being exhibited. In other words, we must compare the change in their baseline behavior to the situation that is now unfolding. As an example, a player has been engaged and watching everyone. But now, he makes a large bet and turns to look at the action at the next table over. What does that mean?
If it happens once, it may mean nothing, or it might. But as we continue to observe this player, and we can correlate this to his having a big hand, now we have a reliable tell. I’m not saying to base your decisions on a one-time event, but if you can observe this tell in multiple circumstances, you may have found a reliable tell for this player. More on that when we get to specific tells.
You should rarely base your decisions entirely on a tell. Most of the time, you will need to play based on your fundamental strategy. Some players will exhibit more tells than others, some games will have more of those players than others. Remember, I said that being able to read tells and hide your own, is only a “piece” of your overall strategy, not the strategy itself.
Poker Is Situational
I will say this continually: poker is situational, as are tells. There are no hard and fast rules in poker, although I have read many books that make every attempt to provide them. Every game is a different experience, made up of different personalities, playing styles, etc. It could even be the same players, but the game itself will not be the same as the last one, or the next one.
That said, the most important aspect of reading poker tells is to compare a player’s tells with the situation in which it is exhibited. By correlating specific tells with specific situations, you can now form conclusions when you see the same tell in the same type of situation in the future. The more instances you can observe a tell, in the same type of situation from a player, the more reliable that tell becomes.
There will be tells that have no value, as they relate to the hand strength of the player, and there will be others that will have a very specific meaning. Those are the tells we want to focus on. There will be players that will have tells that few others have, and these can be very valuable. Highly experienced players may well have eliminated their tells just by playing so much. But most of the poker-playing world will exhibit the more common tells, which is what we will be discussing throughout the Poker Tells Series.
Structuring Tells Into Categories
Being that poker is situational, there are no tells that will mean the same thing in all situations. In “Reading Poker Tells,” by Zachary Elwood, he says, “You can’t say something like, when this poker player stares at me, he’s got a weak hand. It doesn’t work that way. But, you might say – when this player stares at me when it’s my turn to act, he’s usually got a weak hand.” That’s situationally specific.
I have read/studied numerous books on Poker Tells. And some body language books that are not specifically related to poker, but still useful.
- Joe Navarro & Phil Helmuth – Read’em & Reap
- Mike Caro – Caros’ Book Of Poker Tells
- Randy Burgess – Ultimate Guide To Poker Tells
- Joe Navarro – What Every Body Is Saying
- Joe Navarro – Louder Than Words
- James McKenna – Beyond Poker Tells
- Zachary Elwood – All four “Reading Poker Tells” plus his video series.
- And others, but I believe the above list to be the best picks.
Of all I have read, I believe that Zachary Elwood has established the best framework for looking at/studying poker tells. That said, the poker tells situational categories defined below are directly from Zachary Elwood, and I believe them to be in perfect alignment with our thinking here at Pokerrailbird.
Three Situational Categories
- Waiting For Action Tells -These are tells that you may observe from players as they are waiting for their turn to act.
- During Action Tells – Tells that a player may demonstrate when it is their turn to act.
- Post Bet Tells – Tells that a player may exhibit after they have completed their action, be that bet/check/raise, etc.
Although the above categories may have some overlap, I think that the categories above, again by Zachary Elwood, are defined as well as possible. We will use these as our base categories as we begin to discuss specific tells and how they fit into each of the categories above.
I hope you have enjoyed our introduction to reading poker tells. We will have many more articles coming detailing each tell.
Each week we will discuss a tell in our weekly Newsletter, don’t forget to subscribe.
