I’m going to continue talking about betting motion tells in this post. I’m going to talk about a particular player I play with in a $15-30 limit Hold'em game. I think an analysis of his tendencies will be a really good demonstration of how you can take the more generic, basic concepts I talked about in my last post and apply them to a specific player. ...
Betting movement tells – betting forcefully vs. betting gently
I’ve been thinking a lot about betting motion tells over the past few weeks. The last few sessions I’ve played, I’ve been focusing on player hand movements—I’ve been wearing my baseball cap real low and watching people’s hands as they bet or raise. I’m going to devote this post and the following post to betting movements – in this post I’ll talk about general theory and tendencies, and in the next ...
Direct eye contact after betting and what it usually means
In the last tournament I played ($340 buy-in) there were only a few hands where physical tells and mannerisms played a significant role in how the hands went down. I'll spend a couple posts talking about some of the more interesting hands. This hand came up just a few hands before I got knocked out. We were down to the final 18 players on the final two tables. Average chip stack was 140,000. I ...
Freeze-up bluff tell in $30-60 Limit Hold’em hand
I had a couple interesting hands this weekend in the $15-30 game. There were only a few hands where tells played a big part in how I played. The one I'm going to tell you about involves a very common tell, but it’s not one that’s usually so obvious at fixed limit games. It’s usually one you see a lot more at no-limit. But I think that limit is the perfect training ground for learning how to ...
Facial expressions of strength and weakness
Can you tell which two of these pictures belong together and which one belongs on its own? All three of these pictures are taken from three different hands in a "pro meets celebrity" poker tournament Jeremy Sisto played. All three of them were taken after Jeremy made a bet. Two of them were with hands where he was relatively sure he had the best hand. One is from a hand where his hand was ...
Checking quickly vs. taking a long time to check
In no-limit hold’em, it is a common strategy for the pre-flop raiser to fire a continuation bet on the flop. An opponent with a strong hand will often check quickly to the pre-flop raiser, because they don’t want to prevent the pre-flop raiser’s natural tendency to fire another round. They don’t want to arouse suspicion by taking a long time to check. An immediate (and by immediate I do mean ...
Limit player who holds chips defensively
Live fixed-limit, full-ring Hold'em hands that interest me enough to spend much time analyzing them are pretty rare, just because so many of the decisions are pretty straight-forward. I've got a hand here from a few days ago that I've been thinking a while about. It's a hand I probably could have played a bit better and that seems obvious in hindsight. The hand involves a couple of common tells so ...
Acting weak when strong, starring Matt Damon
We'll look at a video of Matt Damon flopping a full house in the 2009 WSOP (starts at 2 minutes). Damon exhibits a few behaviors that are fairly common from recreational players with huge hands who want people to think they're weak. ...
Hole card tells in Guts games and 5-Card Draw
In guts-style poker games, if you’ve ever played them in home games, the whole game is basically who’s in or out based on their current hand. No draws, no extra cards, nothing. You’re either in or you’re out and if you win you take down the pot. If you end up loser you have to match the pot. It can be a pretty anxiety-inducing game if you are truly playing match-the-whole-pot rules. In this post ...
Jamie Gold, lies, and ambiguous statements
Some people think that all poker players are liars. All poker players sometimes lie; that’s definitely true. But in my experience most players don’t often lie during a hand. They may misrepresent their hands, or mislead you, especially after the hand is over, but seldom will they tell an outright lie while a hand is going on. ...
Most useful tells in limit poker
I’ve been playing more limit hold'em lately, and I’ve put some thought into the tells that are most useful at limit versus the most useful ones at no-limit. Obviously there’s a lot less psychological pressure in limit, which makes for less tells. And the regular players, even the horrible ones, are accustomed to the common situations of the game and therefore give away less information. But ...
Threatening-to-turn-cards-over tell
The threatening-to-turn-your-hand-over move is a pretty common tell you'll see at low stakes and sometimes medium stakes. You can often see it happen very clearly when a guy bets, another guy goes to call, and the bettor, almost in a threatening manner, prepares to flip his cards over. It can sometimes appear like some comical Western stand-off, with the one guy getting ready to draw his gun (or ...
Kido Pham vs Doug Lee: verbal trickery and making speeches
In honor of recently finishing the infamous Doug Lee thread on Twoplustwo, I'll devote a little time to examining a hand between Lee and Kido Pham. In this hand, Doug Lee raises with K2 and Pham calls in position with TJ. The flop comes KQ9, with Pham flopping the straight. Pham checks and Lee bets. Pham calls. The turn comes a blank. Pham checks and Doug Lee goes all in and it's all ...
Staring at hole cards usually means a weak hand
I want to talk about a tell that is very, very useful against many mediocre players. But it's also a tell you can catch a lot of pretty experienced players exhibiting, too. Here it is: The longer someone looks at their hole cards during their initial look at them, the weaker the cards are. Relatedly, though less useful, some players will look away very quickly from strong hole cards. ...