Live Poker Tells

As a poker player you should be looking for any advantage you can find to help you figure out the content of your opponents hand. You can do this in a variety of ways but one of the most notorious ways is to look for physical tells that you opponent is giving off. These are usually done without any awareness by your opponent. When they do these things without thinking about them they become much more reliable. This is where they psychology part of the game comes into effect in a big way. Tells usually won't give you a definite answer as to the content of your opponents hand, though sometimes they can, but it may be the deciding factor on top of a plethora of other observations. In this article I will briefly go over a few live tells that you can look for at the poker table to try and help you get a read on your opponent.

In this article I'm really not going to touch on probably the most important tell that you can acquire at a poker table, which are betting patterns. That should go without saying. Another pretty obvious good tell that extends to all formats of poker is rate of play. If a player takes a really long time, or longer than usual, to make a decision then they probably have a good hand and are trying to figure out how they're going to be able to extract maximum value. If a player makes an unusually quick bet or raise then they are probably in a position of weakness and are trying to display confidence.

If a player is looking at the flop intently then odds are they don't have a hand at this point in the game. They are probably staring so long because they are trying to figure out what possible draws they may have. If a player stares intently at their opponent then they are probably nervous that that player is going to call or bet. Whenever a player stares at me like this I almost always bet.

There are some even more obvious tells than this. If a player is holding their breath or visibly shaking, yes it does happen sometimes, then they are probably nervous about being raised or called. Put pressure on these tells.