08-23-04, LearnTexasHoldem:
A Few Tells
what are some physical tells of a person that you would notice at a poker table that someone is bluffing or has a strong hand?
And Also: who are you are you a pro at poker or just a person that goes to tablerooms and casinos alot like me.
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Answer: When I think of tells I usually don't think about someone making a gesture or not opening an Oreo cookie. The media often exaggerates bluffing and tells in poker. If tells were so easy to pick up on, then even the best tournament pro players who play against eachother all the time would pick up on stuff more often. They don't though, they are bluffed all the time.
The fact is that it is very hard to read someone when they bet big into you since nervousness can mean weakness or strength and if you play in a tough field then most likely your opponents are aware of their body language and throw out misinformation. Let me redefine a tell for you in a way that I think will be more helpful. If you have been paying attention to the game then you should have a bank of information about previous hands and how each player played them. You also can watch their body language in these situations.
When you are in a hand with them then, you look back over all this information and try to see what fits and what doesn't. Based on their playing pattern, does this hand make sense? Does it feel right? A tell for me is a bit of insight using all the available information. If I have seen a guy bet really fast into other players with nothing but a high card on the river then I'll remember that for latter. If I have seen someone just slow play every strong hand they hit, I take notice. If I see a person who likes to bluff on the turn if an Ace hits, I take notice.
There are patterns and it is these you should be looking at and not whether or not you can stare a player down. As you gain experience you're intuition about hands that seem off will go up. I wouldn't focus my energy on tells though, there are a lot of more important concepts to work on.
As for your question as to if I am a pro or not, it depends on your definition. Is poker my only source of income? No. I have a number of online businesses. Is playing poker what I spend the majority of my time doing? For the past year and a half yes. Before that I had a year off, then two years before that were solid poker. Poker will always be a part of my life but I don't think it is a profession that I would want to do the rest of my life. It is very stressful and it can easily consume your whole life. I've had that problem a few times so I've had to tone it down and try to live a more balanced life.
Also, I hate to say it but playing for a living does take some of the joy out of cards which is why I started to begin with. Mixing work and play can be great sometimes but the majority of the time it just becomes work. What eventually happens is you forget how much you loved just playing cards and you focus only on winning more money. When that happens it is a job and you've lost something that made your life enjoyable.
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