Defining a tell

Ok so I recently started playing a couple of live games in my city, and have run into a couple of regulars who seem to have patently obvious tells that say something. Im wondering what you would do once you feel you have spotted a tell, to find out what exactly that tell means. Do you simply pay to see when involved in a hand? Do you hope to catch it when someone else is willing to see showdown? Do you just push the limits of the player to see if they fold/play back to determine if the tell represents strength/weakness?

The setup: Very aggressive winning regular who seems oblivious to position, but keenly aware of table weakness, on occasion when involved in a pot will look down at his stack, move his hand almost as if he intends to bet, then stop, put his hand back, and check. He has done this robotically enough that it has caught my attention. He doesnt see many showdowns as he often becomes too aggressive and everyone folds. I flatted the nuts against him in a small-medium pot once just b/c I had to know if he ever bluff's, and he was. I feel certain this particular body language he expresses says something about his hand and what he intends to do, I just dont know how to go about picking it apart.

I think you shouldn't be willing to pay to see if a read is right unless you are going to 100% playing with them for a long enough period of time it is worthwhile. I won't ever do this unless I think it will make that much of a difference and typically i just wait to see if my read is right from them playing a pot with someone else.

thats a tell. take all his money.
someone i play with does this...
*flop*
insta bet
*turn*
insta double bet on flop
*riv*
insta shove.
literally as soon as the card hit the table.

watch for betting patterns...
this is a good tell. i'd say keep up with it until he reverses it... as in he does the same thing he does when he bluffs b/c he knows you know his tell
so he'll have the nuts but make it look like a bluff to hook you in... it's like value bettting squared.

it means he wants u to chk so u pot

look for oreos

You mean "blatantly" obvious, right?

On September 02 2008 22:08 kantoiki wrote: look for oreos

fuck yes.

to OP, that is a tell of a weak hand (classically). But, like all things, he could know that you know this and some psychology is involved. Try Mike Caro's Book of Poker Tells. Or just google common poker tells.

PS- The dumber the player the the less a tell implies. It doesn't really matter if a bad/dumb player gives a weak tell, you can always win it by getting them to fold. But if they have a strong tell and you have a mediocre hand you can't rely on the tell here. They may think their pocket sixes are super good when there are 100s of better hands possible.

If you spend more time playing with the same guy you'll be able to tell if he's strong or weak, you should not pay or play back at him just to see what this tell means, tells are supposed to earn you money, not the opposite. Even if i understand you want to exploit it once you know what it means, he can be aware of it and use it against you by adjusting accordingly. Just observe and don't say a word about it, soon or later you'll know what does it mean and you can start exploiting it. No need to mention you should never give away things like this ....


For the record, in one of my live session, i ran my stack up to 1k$ at Montreal's casino and i had position on a guy who was playing good and had the same stack, we got involved in 2 key hands where i hold the nuts and he made 2 strong fold on the river. Then he told me it was easy to fold because he had a tell on me: when im strong, i used to shake my leg unconsciously. Now let me tell you he regretted telling me this since then for obvious reasons.