A tell is a body movement or some form of facial expression that can give more experienced poker players, who are closely watching you, an idea of whether you do in fact have a very strong Poker hand or are trying to bluff them with a low valued hand! Below is a complete overview of the top 10 Poker player tells. Two Plus Two Poker Forums General Poker Strategy Poker Tells/Behavior, hosted by: Zachary Elwood: Speech play/body language to induce calls.

1. Body Language Poker Tells Real Money
2. Body Language Poker Tells The Most
3. Body Language Poker Tells Friends
4. Poker Body Language Tells

Salespeople and pickup artists study body language to improve their game. Poker players study tells for the same reason. Call them tells or something else, but all body language. Is cut from the same cloth. Psychologists say women are better natural body language readers than men. 6 – Body Language. Body language is the type of information that depends on your perceptions about someone’s reactions. At a poker table, we call those reactions tells. Some tells can be faked, for sure. And some players are prone to do just that. (They’re “actors”, as Mike Caro says.). Body language is the type of thing that you’ll get infinitely better at reading as time goes on. This could be said about most any skill in poker, but picking up on tells is truly something that requires actual game play experience to learn and improve upon. Body language comes, to me, in two different varieties.

BODY LANGUAGE FOR POKER PLAYERS: SPOTTING TELLS It's one of the most talked about parts of poker: the tells. Whether or not you are at a multi-table tournament or a cash game, poker tells are always there. The pro's learn to hide them, the amateurs die by them. No matter your skill level, you too can learn to profit from spotting, and using, tells.

Spotting a tell is often difficult for new players or players who are not used to looking for them. Each player is different, and what may mean one thing for one player may mean something else for another. The easiest way to get into the habit of spotting tells is to start small: watch one person at a time. Watch how they act when they fold without betting, how they act when they have a good hand, how they act when they are bluffing, etc. Once you are confident in your ability to read one player, start studying others and see if the tells appear with them as well. More often then not, you will start learning what tells happen most often, and how to spot them.

Tells are often very subtle, but one you learn to spot them it will be much easier to pick up the clues. Remember the basic truism: in poker, showing strength means you are weak, while showing weakness means you are strong. It's a game of perception, and you need to be perceptive to spot the tells Here is a list of some of the most commonly encountered tells in poker:

? The Lean Back: A player is often conscious of the other people at the table, and if they know you are looking at them, they may sometimes do one of the classic tells: the lean-back. A player who has a strong hand will often lean back from the table, crossing their arms in front of them. This is an unconscious showing of their desire to seem nonthreatening. If you see this, the player is probably sitting on a good hand.

? The Easy Smile: The stare-down is a commonly used tactic at the poker table. If the hand is down to you and one other player, and you want to know what that player has, try staring them down. If they look back at you and they are sitting on a good hand, they will often offer a smile slightly after making eye-contact. But be careful. A true smile will bring the corners of the eyes back as well as the corners of the mouth. A fake smile where only the mouth smiles is usually an indicator of weakness. You'll need to be sure you are able to tell the difference between a genuine and fake smile.

? It's in the Eyes: When a player is dealt a great starting hand, such as a pair of kings in hold 'em or A-2-A-4 in Omaha, their eyes tend to get bigger. What you need to look for is someone who looks like they just saw something they like very much. The muscles around their eyes will unconsciously retract the eyelids and their pupils may even dilate. If you see this happen, you can be sure that players has a strong hand.

? The Repeat: There are verbal tells just that are just as valuable as physical tells. For instance, if you ask a player 'Did you hit your three of a kind?' and they repeat the question back to you, as in 'You think I hit three of a kind?' the answer is almost always yes. This fishing for information can be very useful if you do it correctly and know what to look for. If someone repeats your question back to you, this is usually a sign they are trying to avoid lying, and thus have a good hand.

? The Dejected Sigh: You've probably seen this a hundred times, and may have even done it yourself. As soon as a player looks at their cards or sees the flop, they almost immediately say something like 'Dammit,' or sigh in frustration. This is their attempt to try to convince you they are weak. But remember what we said earlier? Someone who is projecting weakness is usually strong, and when you see someone try so blatantly to project weakness, they are strong.

? The Look Away: When the flop comes and a player quickly looks away, this is a clear sign the cards have hit them with something good. For example, if a pair of 7's comes off on the flop and you see a player look down at their chips or quickly turn their attention to another player, that person probably has hit their set of 7's. In this situation, you'll often see these players check the bet and wait for someone else to put some money in the pot. At that time, don't be surprised if you see a big check-raise from the person who was so quick to look away from the flop.

Poker players are an interesting bunch.

As rational as they may think they are, they also tend to be quite superstitious.

This can be observed in all things they do to bring luck to their side. (Such as having a lucky charm, for example.)

Somewhere in between fact and superstition, there are things like personology, and pseudosciences in general.

Could they be of any use when playing poker? Or are they a total waste of one’s time?

1 – What Are Pseudosciences

Pseudosciences are practices that haven’t been found legitimate by the scientific method.

Another way to say this is that they’re bodies of knowledge that haven’t been objectively verified. Or at least not yet.

It’s interesting to observe how some popular forms of pseudoscience were, at one point, taken quite seriously.

The biggest example of this is astrology.

Many people today see it as total nonsense. But its status centuries ago was like that of astronomy today.

The same goes for alchemy. This was a legitimate form of chemistry in many people’s eyes.the

In fact, both practices are still highly regarded by many.

It’s just that not everyone who practices astrology or alchemy today is worried about their scientific status. And why would they? So many other things have been called pseudosciences as well.

There’s a page on Wikipedia just for that, by the way. And it’s quite a surprising list if you ask me.

Sure, astrology and alchemy are there. But so are neuro-linguistic programming, psychoanalysis, and even the technical analysis in finances.

Ironically, one topic that it’s not on that Wikipedia page is physiognomy.

Although, nowadays, it usually goes by the name of personology.

2 – What Can We See in a Face?

Physiognomy, in whatever name it’s called, goes back at least to Ancient Greece.

In a nutshell, this is the belief that one’s physical characteristics, especially one’s face, say a lot about his/her personality.

According to those who study physiognomy, everything about your face means something.

Seriously, everything: the distance between your eyes, the shape of your nose, the size of your lips, the width of your face…

As I’ve said, people have studied this over centuries. And it’s come in and out of fashion countless times.

One of its most famous revivals came in the early 20th century.

Almost a century ago, American judge Edward Vincent Jones observed facial patterns in people charged with certain crimes.

He then set out to systematize his thoughts, eventually calling it personology.

It became quite a big deal, which led him to establish a personology foundation in California.

Today, one of the most prominent teachers of personology is a woman called Naomi Tickle. And she’s adamant in saying that this is a science.

According to her, it can help you in countless ways.

One of the most important ones would be finding the right career for you.

Since I myself have never tried it, I don’t know how accurate those analyses would be.

But I know of at least 2 things that give this new physiognomy revival at least some credibility.

3 – From Biology to AI

In recent times, it’s been suggested that our hormones have an influence on certain physical traits.

Testosterone levels, in particular, seem to be noticeable in a man’s whole body.

Those with a more squared jaw, for example, are said to have higher levels of this hormone. And the same would go for those whose ring finger is much larger than the index finger.

Apart from biology, another ally of personologists has been the development of face recognition systems.

The advances in this type of technology are making it easier to find patterns in people’s faces.

Consequently, it’s making it easier for personologists to test their theories.

But is it enough to make this body of knowledge more credible than others?

4 – Personology and Other Studies

Those in the news media know that people are fascinated by the kind of stuff that personologists study.

This is easier to observe when we take a look at how people react to some other pseudosciences.

One example here is graphology, which is the study of a person according to his/her handwriting.

Another is chiromancy, which is the study of one’s hands.

For some, even your sleep position can mean something. (They haven’t invented a cool name for it yet.) But personology (or physiognomy) has an advantage over all those other studies.

Personologists don’t need to ask anyone to write in cursive. (Many schools don’t even teach kids how to do it anymore.)

They also don’t need to have any prior information about someone.

In other words, it doesn’t matter if you don’t want to reveal your birthday or your sleep position.

They’ll be able to give their verdict about you just the same.

5 – What’s in It for Poker Players?

Ok, so what’s the type of information we can get with the study of personology?rea

Basically, anything that has do with one’s character.

This is an important distinction for poker pros to have in mind.

We all make guesses about others based on their ethnicity, clothes, gender, age, and so on.

These and other things are all considered types of cold reading. That is, they are broad generalizations based mostly on social constructs.

For example, if you see an older man at your poker table, your first reaction will be to think that he’s less aggressive than a younger guy.

If you’re up against a Scandinavian, you might think he’s loose-aggressive.

When facing a guy from China, you’re inclined to think that he’s a math whizz.

The study of personology would lead you to make some of those kinds of inferences.

With the exception that, if what Tickle and others say is true, your level of accuracy would be much higher. And potentially quite lucrative, if we are to believe what she says about someone’s nose. According to her:

“You have to really look at that from the side profile.”

Ok. And then?

Well, here’s an analysis of a particular type of nose:

The Roman-shaped nose is a bossy nose. It likes to be in charge. They are also very aware of costs.

And here’s what she says about another, quite different type:

The ski-jump nose is a monetary carefree nose, one that likes to spend all their money without a care about saving for tomorrow.

Does it mean that, at first, it’d be easier to bluff someone who has a nose like Tom Cruise?

I have no idea. Because, until now, I always thought those characteristics depended mostly on one’s ethnicity.

In any case, there’s at least 1 variable we should always bring to our analyses of other players. And it’d be wise to at least talk about it before reaching any type of verdict on someone.

Body Language Poker Tells Real Money

6 – Body Language

Body language is the type of information that depends on your perceptions about someone’s reactions.

At a poker table, we call those reactions tells.

Some tells can be faked, for sure. And some players are prone to do just that. (They’re “actors”, as Mike Caro says.)

But, with practice, you learn to distinguish what reactions are more reliable. And sometimes one single tell you have on someone is enough for you to make a lot of money.

If you’re a live poker player, I don’t need to say much more about the importance of body language.

So, what’s my point in mentioning it in this article?

The thing is: your cold reading must be based on solid principles. And it’s up to you to decide if that’s the case of personology or any other pseudosciences.

Conclusion

There’s 1 last thing to be said about personology.

Even if it doesn’t turn out to be a reliable source of information, it’s important to notice that it’s generated stereotypes. And, over thousands of years, people have internalized those stereotypes. (Consciously or not.)

That’s how people become racists, misogynists, and so on. In fact, even those who are the victims of stereotypes internalize them.

After all, they live in the same society as everyone else. So, studying any type of cold reading is an excellent way for you to raise your self-awareness.

Body Language Poker Tells The Most

Because you start to become aware of things you’ve been led to believe all your life.

Once you identify a certain pattern, you may feel that same reaction you always did.

Body Language Poker Tells Friends

The difference is that now you’ll be able to disidentify from it. As you see, it becomes a matter of choice.

Poker Body Language Tells

Nelson Mandela once said that if you can be taught how to hate, you can be taught how to love.

In this second case, though, you’ll have to be your own teacher.

At least until you’re able to find one whom you find to be trustworthy.