Hello everyone. How many of you rely on physical tells when playing live, and how important/relevant do you think they are? Also, are there any good books regarding this information? What are your thoughts on Mike Caro's book of tells? Thanks for the input.

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I think the value of tells is positive but grossly overestimated.

It's almost always better to put more time into improving your game.

I agree that putting more time into your game is time better spent, but I don't think tells are overrated.

I win at 2/5 live but I'm pretty transparent and I still get the adrenaline shake when I'm ahead in a huge pot. My hand shakes so badly that I can hardly get the chips in the pot. If more players took the time to learn the most basic tells I'd be in big trouble.

Sure, that will always happen. But what you consider to be "ahead" in a "huge" pot will change as you play more and/or get better.

The first time you have the nut flush in a $500 pot you're nervous because it's a lot of money to you and the board could pair so please please please one time my equity is only 70-30% oh god what if I lose.

At some point, you get good enough where you're looking at a $1,000 pot, and rationally deciding to ship another $1,000 as a stone cold bluff because your opponent's going to fold 40% rather than 33% and that's a "huge" edge.

You naturally deal with smaller edges in larger pots as you get better, and some of these nervousness tells just evaporate.

I see what you guys are saying, and I appreciate both points of view. I realize that not everyone is going to have tells and most of them are not obvious. However, I've noticed that if I just sit back and watch people at 1/2 when I'm not in a hand they display tons of tells, some are very accurate indeed. At this point its just practice because I don't trust them enough. But I think that combining physical tells with all the other info could give someone a decent advantage vs. most villains. Thoughts?

Playing well gives you an advantage against 1/2 opponents that dwarfs the small advantage from tells.

It's like stopping to pick up a dollar on the street when you're on your way to redeem a winning lottery ticket.

Playing live at the lower stakes I'd say its almost equally important to pick up tells as to play well. Lots of peeps put little attention to what they do, so u can get tons of reliable tells if u know how to look.

Try to always keep track of what u r doing and I guarantee ull find some tells of ur own.

The best part in picking up tells is that it's not like you have to decide to spend extra time studying them. You learn about them as you play (outside of reading up on a basic list of common tells). Learning about tells isn't going to take time away from being able to study the game itself to improve. And vice versa, studying the game away from the table isn't going to prevent you from picking up on tells.


We get to do both. Sometimes tells can get me screwed up. I could have the 3rd or 4th nuts against an opponent and I read him as being super confident and strong as he aggressively bets at me, but I may not know that he thinks top pair top kicker is an amazing hand and I have him crushed...but because I read him as super strong, maybe I lean toward folding. Know the player if you're going to incorporate live tells into your game as a supplement to just understanding the betting action taking place.

I think Dan Harrington said something along the lines of he is playing what he thinks is proper poker but when he's not sure about a decision he might use some physical tells to help him decided.

Larger the stakes, the more valuable tells are. Playing 1/2, focus on your game and patterns. 2/5, if you can pick up on a tell in a tight spot, you may glean some value. 5/10 and above, where the players are more tricky and patterns are less apparent, tells May come in handy.

In all cases, studying tells is far less valuable than studying your game and betting patterns. Caro's book is a good 100 level read, but somewhat outdated, especially for stronger players. Zachary Elwood's book is better, IMO, for stronger players.

I play low-mid stakes about 25-30 hours a week and can't recall the last time I was in a game and didn't observe at least one player, and usually a few players, with reliable tells. As you would guess they are more common at the lower the stakes and with inexperienced players and senior citizens.

Posters here dismiss Novarro and Caro's books, but they are good places to start. If you can't find a few good tips in them you aren't working at it hard enough. Start there and with experience you'll find your own things to look for.

Ding ding ding.

Most decisions at 1/2 are not close. When you take an otherwise terrible action based on a read, you need to be absurdly sure of your read to make it mathematically justified. Otherwise you just made a catastrophic error.

You should be using reads for close decisions. But if you're constantly facing close decisions at 1/2, you probably suck. It's a lot easier to stop sucking than it is to become a good tell reader.

I see this is based on the idea of tells but like most have said if you are looking for tells to win the hand at this lvl you are missing something during the hands, i feel like at 1/2 even 2/5 betting patterns are more prevalent and can lead to higher profit, also just watching how people play and there attitude is a plus in general so look at them as a whole not just tells

Actually watching a hpt ft right now and the guy with kk pre put his shirt over his face and makes a small raise pre and a small flop raise all while looking away
Maria ho 1 time

I don't "rely" on tells at all! However, I love to use them after spotting and correlating them.

As others have said it is more important to play a good game and pay attention to betting patterns etc. Yet I think looking for tells is hugely underestimated by most players. I recommend "reading poker tells" by zack elwood I think. He did a lot of work and really tells you how to do it right when it comes to tells -correlation!

I once owned a hot shot type player who was in every hand playing lag on roids. He would slide his chips out with his arm about 75% or less extended when he had a decent hand. When he was firing with air he would reach out all the way and use more aggressive body language overall in each bet. I adjusted after seeing him showdown a few hands and made some big calls (one with AQ hi) because of a tell!

He lost three buy ins that night in 2 hours after I figured it out. Often they aren't easy to find and some players have big ones and some players dont, tells are work but worth it if you are a serious player imo.

Tells are romantic in poker because of all the movies and Hollywood associated with them

They can be important and help towards "reading people"- but I think they need to be very reliable to work effectively and that can take time

Tells are also fun- because when you spot an habitual tell on a person, you might want to, ahem,...tell that person you have a read on something they did due to ego- just don't do it!!!

Sometimes you can just get a feel that a hand doesn't seem right and it's a combo of many things

At the end of the day, tells can be faked easily where other micro things can't- such as betting habits, ranges etc etc

For example, I had AA and out of the cnr of my eye I saw my friend in EP watching me. I sometimes have a pre-muck move they all know when I hold the cards a certain way and moved into that position while asking someone else for a beer. My friend proceeded to raise and I popped him which made him confused and he shoved (his stack wasn't too healthy).

My friend at the time wasn't savvy enough to know if I looked fake

Don't read a book about tells. Just because a guy does something you saw in the book doesn't mean he has what the book says he has. You need to just pay attention to the table you're playing against and if you happen to notice something from someone, keep it in mind if it happens again. No need to go crazy over them.

+1

Goes for any book really and what games you're involved in

Caros book for example gives pictures...but not everyone will look or act this way.

Not only that but the pics aren't even natural looking or candid in Caro's book - they all look forced and acting...kind of ironic really

Tells are good and will add tremendously to your profits. If you pick up on just 2 or 3 tells over the course of the session that can equal 2 or 3 buyins or more.

I wouldn't say I rely on tells, I pick them up occasionally. It's much often that I pick up on a bet sizing tell than a physical tell. But the kind of player who gives off lots of physical tells is generally the same player that makes a lot of sizing mistakes or just general mistakes so it kind of overlaps.

Pretty hard to catch someone in the act of a tell while taking a random picture with good lighting.

And these were not models prolly some friends to help illustrate his point.

And I would say if you dont trust the stuff your learning in a book why are you reading it.

He never says only use his book or that these are 100% but still if you have been there for 10 mins and are in a tough spot at a table and you see a guy check your stack with his eyes and half his hand halfway over his mouth, are you gonna use this to A. See if he is strong B. Fold cus it doesn't help C. Call just to get the info for future

I don't even think it's so much about specific tells as much as it is important to be paying attention to people's over all reaction to detect weakness or strength.

This weekend I was playing 1-3 NL live. I had AK and raised preflop. Flop comes Ad Qd 3s. I bet strong and a guy behind me calls. The turn brings a Qc. I bet strong and the other player clearly didn't feel good about calling as he kind of hesitated and thought about it. I was 99% sure he didn't have the trips or better and was quite sure he most likely had the diamond draw or a weak ace. I was quite certain he folds any real bet on the river when it hit 7s. Sensing his weakness and hesitation I checked the river with the intention of calling an all-in, which he obliged. He announces "a pair wins" and I take it down.

But, yeah, the vast majority of time playing solid poker is the most important thing. There are definitely times when you can sense weakness or strength and adjust your betting or bet sizing accordingly. But very specific tells like ticks or whatever I almost never use. The only exception is if someone is trying to act strong or weak in an obnoxious way.

A valuable tell because the situation happens so often: when preflop action is on you, glance left. Many times the next two seats are telegraphing their intentions.

Rely is a strong word. Tells are a part of playing live and should only be used and sharpened after you know the basics of hand reading. I think the major problem with tells is that some people think they know how to read someone better than they actually do. So when someone thinks they're an excellent tell reader and continually misread people, they assume tells must be worthless when in reality they just suck at it. Caro's book is alright but again, too many people read it and assume they can read tells when they can't. So if you're going to use them, be prepared to be wrong quite a few times until you can really sharpen your ability to do it properly.

Are the people saying not to focus on tells at 1/2 referring to very specific physical tells? Because I feel like there are a lot of general tells you can pick up on. Hands on cards means they're gonna fold, grabbing chips before its their turn means they're gonna bet, etc. Also there are so many bad poker faces out there that help you figure out a villains hand, why not use that information when making a decision? So much table talk too, I am always using that to figure out an opponents personality and how they might play.