I wanted to add another note about Martin Staszko and his tells at the 2011 WSOP ME. One of the biggest hands he got was when he had A9 and got a full house on the turn (click for video link to start of hand). As I stated in the last post, I think he had a lot of physical looseness in this situation, and I think this was due to having such strong cards. I think the looseness/relaxation of his hand and finger movements is pretty evident in this hand and I wanted to talk about it.
Check out this link where, on the turn, Heinz has bet and Staszko is “considering” a raise. Before putting the chips in, he does a weird little playful flipping of his chips which, to me, gives away his level of relaxation. Now, of course, it’s possible that a player could do this all the time, whether his hand was strong or weak, and it wouldn’t mean anything. But I think you’ll find if you watch a lot of Staszko’s footage that you won’t see him do this little playful thing ever again in any other hand. (If you do see it, please bring it to my attention, because I didn’t see it.)
If you compare Staszko’s hand movements in this clip with some of the other situations where he had much more vulnerable hands (linked to from my last blog post), I think you’ll notice more physical looseness overall, but especially in his hands. It’s very hard, in my opinion, for someone to be completely stoic and motionless, and hide all of the elements of relaxation, and I think this is one of the little areas where some information was leaking through.
Links not working (vids not available anymore on Youtube).