People have said this before, but just learn to look at yourself every hand. You can pick up tells on yourself pretty good, of course, and learn to work off them. Like, I notice something I do whenever I try to value bet, and try to imitate that when I'm bluffing, or vice versa. Might just be me, but looking back, I see a lot of tells that I have personally, and yeah, after a while, when other people start noticing your tell, too (you'll notice them folding to your good hands and calling/raising your bluffs) that's when you start to change it up. Overall, it would be optimal to do exactly the same thing every hand, but that never works now, does it. For example, like someone mentioned before,
This is a pretty common tell so I tend to snap call whenever I'm trying to slowplay a really good hand, at which point it throws off the other person.

Meh, most of this works for the weekly home poker game more than anything, but at casinos, when you do sit there for a few hours+ with the same group of people, everyone does pick up tells on each other and it's good to change things up as much as possible.

The tell that I find most reliable is the guy who acts distraught that the flop/turn/river missed him. Lots of sighing and agonizing. Then he raises big on that same street. Always the virtual nuts.

Also I was watching Antonio Esfandiari brain dump on WSOP live streaming coverage. Guy gets up out of his seat after going all-in. Antonio says "that always means he has a big hand or the nuts. He has so much nervous energy he just can't sit still". So its half a year later and I am in a tourney and I have a huge hand but not the nuts and the other guy goes all-in and gets up out of his chair. And I remember seeing Antonio Esfandiari talk about this but for the life of me I can't remember whether it means he is super strong or super weak. Which I say out loud to the guy next to me and it reminds me that the guy is super strong, so I fold, and villain turns over the absolute nuts.

Remind me to speech / walk with air.

lol @ standing up = the nuts

One guy went all in on the river, then proceeded to stand up out of his chair.

I tanked for a bit.

Then he put his jacket on.

I snap called.

He had garbage and I scooped a huge pot. Sometimes disinterest = disinterest.

According to Bill Chen, the Four Laws of Tells are:

1. Strong means weak.

2. Weak means strong.

3. Weak means weak.

4. Strong means strong.

If you have a good handle on which of the four laws to apply when, your reading ability will grow by leaps and bounds.

+1, couldn't agree more. The most profitable players I have gotten to know have been the nicest guys at the table.

Talkative, but not annoying.
Funny, but not hysterical.
Smiling, but not grining.
Competitive, but not grim.
Generous, but not arrogant.
Drinking, but not drunk.
Knowledgeable, but not know-it-all

This list obv could be continued.

One final thing: Don't be nitty about your money. Play a limit where you can burn 800 BB in one night and not start to whine. If you lose a stack for a bad beat and manage to be funny about it, money is gonna come back faster than you can say "d'ou".

Haven't read thread so sorry if posted. The tell where it's on yourself to act and as you are deciding on your bet, your opponent reaches for chips to signal a snap call. I see this one heaps and most of the time they won't call.

An example was a $200 satellite. 5K start bank.
Guy opens 3X UTG to 150, next to act i look down at AK and 3bet to 400, action folds around and he quickly makes it 1300. I tank for a few minutes and make my mind to shove. I reach for my chips and he immediately grabs his chips to signal a snap call. I splash my chips in and he takes his hand off his stack and mucks.

See this one used a lot at the Casino. Usually signals weakness to me.

EDIT: oh lol top of the page

I always look at people still in the hand before I look at the flop. Wound up in a staring contest with a woman, a great player. We were heads up. Eventually I said, "I'm going to have to insist you look at the flop now." She said, quite correctly, that I was first to act and insisted I look first. So I kept staring at her and checked. She kept staring and checked. I surrended and looked at the turn card first. Funny moment.

Are you out of your mind? An 800BB loss in a 6-hour session would be, like, a 28-sigma event for a typical winning player. Even over time, an 800BB downswing is more likely to indicate that there is something seriously wrong with your game than it is that you've been playing well and running bad.

In the games I play in, a -50BB session is a bad night, and -100BB is a really, really, REALLY bad night.

IMR, losing 800 BB over 6 hours is the equivalent of losing more than 3BB every hand at 40 hands/hour.

I had a similar experience and it ended up costing me a lot. A few years ago I played in a tournament series in a private club, and the leading money winner after 12 monthly events got a main event seat. I was just getting good at tournament poker, but was still relatively inexperienced live. It's the second to last event and I'm the money leader by about $4K over second place, a very, very good player who ran another private club in town. I already know I can't make the final event of the year because of work commitments, so I've got to do as well as possible in this event.

We get down to the final five players and both me and second place are still in. Stacks are about 30 BB and I know if I outlast him it will be very difficult for him to catch me in the final event. Folds to me on button and I raise w/ KQ and he calls in BB. We're both staring at each other as the flop comes out. After about 30 seconds I realize how ridiculous we look, sort of start to laugh nervously and take a glance at the flop, which missed me. I raise my hand as if to check, but before I do catch myself and point at him and squeak out "Your action."

Of course, he saw right though it and bet without ever looking at the flop. Flustered, I pretty much insta-mucked and then felt stupid about how I played the whole thing. It shook me and I played horribly for about the next three orbits. By the time I had recovered he had built a significant stack running over the table and I dwindled down into push or fold zone where I ran my pair into an overpair. He won the tournament, took first place and the main event seat. (As consolation, I still had a net profit of $26K for the series, so I can't complain too much.)

I learned a lot that night...

Just get used to looking at the other players instead of the board. I don't so much get specific tells as I feel that I am reading their attitude. The more you do this, the better you'll get.

When you're out of the hand, watch them play hands, watch the showdowns and see what they had and if you read them correctly. Sometimes I find players that I just can't read. Sometimes I find players that I read almost exactly backwards. Just keep this in mind while you're playing.

The main thing I notice is disinterest. I've picked up a lot of garbage pots because of it.

Being observant makes me better and makes poker more fun. I don't have to sit and wait for cards. I'm definitely not perfect at this, but I think I could pick up 2 or 3 small pots per hour without ever looking at my cards just because I can see the other 3 guys in the pot just missed everything.

This also has the added benefit of getting you more action on your big hands as you aren't sitting there like a total rock for 90% of the hands.

Alan, I think you may be thinking about a fixed limit format, where -100 BB is truly a bad night. But in NL format losing 100BB is routine for one unfortunate hand. I will agree that even in NL a -800BB session is pretty much out of the ordinary.

Eyes dart from board -> own stack or your stack -> but then check, is generally strong.

I also have a theory that, basically, grabbing chips by the very tips of your fingers is weak, grabbing chips by the middle of the top-third of your fingers (middle of the tip) is stronger. This might seem silly but I keep an eye on it (but almost never act on it because I don't know how accurate it is, plus impossible to notice unless they are sitting pretty close to you.)

There's no such thing as a BB in NLHE; the closest you get is the "PTBB," which is twice the size of the big blind.

Are you drug-addled?

Yes, in actual fact we do have BBs in NLHE.