Okay, now that the WSOP Main Event is over, who wants to talk about any interesting behavior/tells they thought they picked up from any of the footage? If you do talk about something specific, please reference the episode number and time if you can, so other people can talk about it.
I thought it was interesting Norman Chad drew attention to the double-check-before-betting in this year’s coverage, because that was something that I’d recently been thinking a lot about. Norman mentioned it when Pierre, for the second time, double-checked his cards before making a bet with a good hand. Here’s the 2+2 post I wrote about this behavior.
In a video below I have the two instances of Pierre’s double-check. You can see, fitting with what I said was the pattern, the general meaning isn’t that someone is super-strong; it just means it’s unlikely they’re bluffing. In the second hand, it’s likely Pierre was very nervous about hitting his K, because that probably committed him to the pot if the guy shoved. But still, I think it’s very unlikely he would check his cards like this if he missed the flop completely. It’s just a slight leak of relaxation.
I’ve included a couple comparison hands that were the only other times I saw someone double-checking hole cards before betting or raising. (If you noticed any more, please let me know.) These were two hands from Joe McKeehen, the eventual winner of the event. (The first hand is from the final table; the second is from an earlier episode.) They’re not exact comparisons, but I thought it was interesting to compare them.
A few notes on this behavior from Joe:
1) His double-checks occur pre-flop. As I said in the other article, pre-flop behavior is less likely to adhere to this pattern, because hand strengths are much less defined and players often won’t have a strong feeling about their hands either way (the main exceptions being QQ+). (Still, having said this, if I saw a recreational player double-check his cards pre-flop before raising, as Joe does in these hands, I'm confident it will usually indicate strength.)
2) His double-checks don't occur immediately before the bet. The closer the double-check is to the bet, the more likely it is to adhere to the pattern. (Still, again, for a recreational player, a double-check any time during the player’s turn before a big bet will generally make me think he’s strong.)
3) Joe is very experienced, so we’d be less likely to trust any normal pattern from him. He is likely to be either balanced (as he seems to be in these two hands) or tricky (reverse of the normal meaning) with this behavior. Joe is also a player who values live reads more than most players, so we’d be less likely to have faith in our reads of him. If anything, I’d be more likely to reverse the typical meaning for him.
Also interesting in the first Joe hand, from the Final Table, it occurs after all of the Main Event episodes have already been out, and after all the players have likely seen Norman Chad call out Pierre’s double-check of cards when strong. Plus it’s possible that Joe would think that Neil might have noticed Joe’s double-check of cards before shoving with QQ in the earlier episode. Considering all of that info at that point, I think it’s even more likely that Joe’s doublecheck of cards would be a weak hand in that spot and that he’s hoping to gain some respect/fear from Neil for the double-check. Then again, for all I know, Joe is just super-balanced and often does this as a normal routine before 4-betting or shoving pre-flop.
This also points out that it's important to have a sense of a player's experience level and general tendencies before making reads on stuff like this. Once you see someone double-check not long before bluffing or semi-bluffing (mainly post-flop) you know you have to be careful using that information in the future.
Here's the video:
Last edited by apokerplayer; 11-12-2015 at 02:43 PM.
No specific tells but i noticed that beckly was looking at his cards as soon as they were dealt to him and not waiting until it was his turn to act. Could of been giving away some intention tells.
No specific tells but i noticed that beckly was looking at his cards as soon as they were dealt to him and not waiting until it was his turn to act. Could of been giving away some intention tells.
Yeah I noticed that. I did actually think I found something meaningful there. I might talk about it later.
I noticed Bekley taking a quick look, too. Very interesting because if he is any kind of reader of tells, it should have given him a slight advantage in terms of viewing others looking at their cards when he already knew his.
This year, I worked for Max Steinberg, studying everyone at the WSOP ME final table for behavioral patterns. If anyone has any questions about what that was like, feel free to ask here. This was my second time doing this; I worked for Amir Lehavot in 2013. I plan on making a couple posts later about this year's event.
Not specifically related to WSOP, but if I see someone constantly checking hole cards I usually make a comment about 'club check' so they know I know they are checking their cards 'a lot'. I think this tends to reduce the amount of bluffing I've seen in the long run. Which it sounds as if that's a 'general' occurrence anyway.
One thing I can relate to 'double checking' cards is that if someone looks at cards one at a time Pre-Flop and then goes back to the first card it is usually a sign that both cards are the same color but they are double checking to see if they are the same suit or not. The longer they look the more likely they are 'connected' somehow by either suit or straight draws. I don't think people look at pairs very long Pre-Flop unless they are AA/KK/QQ since pairs are pretty straight forward to deal with ... you either hit a set or not. Some people insta protect strong hands so that no one else can see them. These are all behaviors that need some data collection to gain what little knowledge they might provide. GL
I noticed Bekley taking a quick look, too. Very interesting because if he is any kind of reader of tells, it should have given him a slight advantage in terms of viewing others looking at their cards when he already knew his.
No, that's exactly the reason people wait to look at their own cards. It's so they can look at their opponents as their opponents view their cards. If anything it gave him a disadvantage, as he'd be checking his own cards instead of picking up subtle tells on the other players.
I did notice Bekley swiping at his lips quite a bit. Could be dry mouth, dry air or nervous habit. Didn't see enough of it to correlate it to anything yet.
As indicated I haven't seen enough of it yet, but I don't think Seat 1 was tanking all that long, at least the first night early on. I wouldn't blame him for tanking a bit when 'everyone' was playing back at him quite often like they were. I would want to take some extra time to think my position as well. GL
