Ok so I am playing my first real big MTT where there will be lots of UK poker pros etc £250,000 guarenteed

So who can help what obvious things should I be looking for?

My only other live experience is winning a few £20 mtts with 500 odd players

In my opinion, if you're playing your first big MTT, AND there are a lot of poker pros, I think you shouldn't be worrying about noticing other players' tells at all and should just be focused on strategy.

If you really want to think about tells you should just be focused on being as stoic and unreadable as you can be and eliminating your own tells. When playing decent competition, I think it's much more important to be unreadable than it is to be good at reading people, just because reading people plays less and less of a role the better your opponents are.

And if it's your first big MTT, you'll probably be a bit on edge and should just stick to worrying about your fundamental strategy and studying other people's strategies. Later, when you're more relaxed at these games, you can maybe think about studying other people's behavior.

strategy part is not an issue... its my first big live MTT I have played bigger online etc....

Will be calm etc.

Just looking for any tell tail signs I would not find whilst playing online

You might think you will be calm, but you won't. I had been playing for about five years when I played a WPT event and I was still nervous.

As Zach said, don't focus on others' tells. Focus on reducing your own.

Oh I see. I was assuming you weren't that experienced.

If I had to name the top ones most useful in a tournament, I'd say:

Immediate calls. These tend to make strong hands unlikely. A lot of times this can be useful preflop for discounting high pairs and AK, in spots like where you 3-bet and an opponent snap-calls or calls quicker than you would think they would with stronger hands.

Long looks at cards or repeated looks back post-flop. Most players tend to put down strong cards quickly pre-flop. Quick looks aren't especially useful, but what's useful is when people stare at their cards for a while. This will usually mean weak hands. This can be useful when you see players behind you staring for a couple seconds at cards pre-flop; this can encourage you to raise when you might otherwise not. Or if you see a guy in late position look early and stare at his cards and action comes around to him and he raises, this might encourage you to 3-bet light. And of course you ideally are trying to see if this pattern matches for that person.

Watching players behind you. Especially in tournaments (I admittedly play very few), I like to watch the two players directly behind me, assuming they look at their cards early. I'm looking for things like: if/when/how they put their chips on cards, what their posture is like, where they direct their attention, if they're doing ostentatious things. Generally players w/ strong hands will avoid doing attention-grabbing behaviors, so when you see a player behind you look at his cards and move around a lot, or grab chips, or slam a chip down on his cards, it's a sign of weakness.

Immediate raises or shoves. These tend to make strong hands unlikely. Most players like to put on at least a small show of concern/hesitation with their strongest cards. This isn't very helpful, as there are still a lot of strong hands players could be snap-shoving with. But it can sometimes make up your mind if you're on the fence. Ideally you'd like to have seen a player bet/raise/shove quickly with a weak hand a few times in the past before acting on this.

Post-bet eye contact. This can be really powerful for amateur players, as many players have patterns with where they look after making big bets. I recommend just watching your opponents whenever there's a big pot and see what they're doing with their attention and eye contact after making big bets. Of course you don't always get to see their cards, but when you do, try to remember what they were doing with their big bluffs and value-bets. Were they shooting occasional glances at their opponent when betting the nuts? Were they looking down at the table completely still when bluffing? Were they staring at their opponent hard when bluffing? By taking note of these kinds of things (and taking notes on your phone can help you remember this stuff) you might be able to form some kind of reliable read over time.

Hope this helps.

the rule with tells is strong means weak, if you determine they are acting.

advice for your tourney? stay calm, focus on your opponents, observe, plan and play tight.

Why play tight?
Play loose and spin it up.

All I'd suggest is really focus on tells in the weaker players because most recs are huge tell boxes and pause before every decision.

I definitely disagree with playing tight as you have a finite number of hands in a tournament.

Do you guys have an idea if checking the cards again before a shove or raise means strength?

Imo if someone checks their cards again before a preflop shove it means strength.

Given that this is his first big MTT I don't mind him playing tight. Getting creative live is very different than online. In early stages there are a lot more limp/callers than online etc. More multiway flops.

If you want to play looser than normal, get a read on your table first. Categorize players mentally and do what apokerplayer said. However, I know from experience that remembering everything the first time you play is not easy. Use the same techniques you use online to brand villains etc.

I remember my first experience with a live MTT. I was surprised how many times hands like KJ were ahead preflop etc. Some players play very differently live. I also remember playing at a certain table for 2 hours, I could have 98% made my mind up about a player and then he'd do something completely stupid which would change everything. Or do something brilliant and I'd have to respect him more.

I love this new subforum btw

Imo strength. Rapid movement, unless you're Rob Salaburu, means weakness imo.

Funny you should ask this. When I was working on my new video series and studying a lot of footage, I found instances of double-checking cards before a post-flop bet to essentially never be bluffs. It might be medium strength hands or strong hands when players do this; the point was it was super-unlikely for a bluffer to double-check his cards right before making a significant bet (as he doesn't want to accidentally convey uncertainty.)

This was most useful post-flop because pre-flop hand strength is so ambiguous that players are capable of doing all sorts of weird things. Whereas post-flop hand strength is more defined and bets become more polarizing. So if you're talking pre-flop shoves I think it will tend to be only slightly reliable, but still a pattern to watch for.

Interestingly, this was the one "new" poker tell I became aware of when studying video recently. I say "new" just because I'd never seen it written about before, although I'm sure some experienced players have been aware of it.

Thanks alot for all the advice it is massively appreciated (especially apokerplayer) I definitely wont be playing tight im an aggresive player and it is a 6 max

yeah, control yourself from betthing for thin on the river with your mid dpds rundown from seat 1 hu vs villain in seat 8 when the river flushes & villain sort of simultaneously grimaces and "distances his torso" without first making sure villain isn't wearing a partial body cast, has crutches & has been sitting uncomfortably for 6.5 hours.

The spot it happened to me was in the wsop main where I 3bet a very active opener and im playing about 27bb, and then the bb who is a good pro tanks for a short time and counting chips and thinking, then checks his cards again before 4betting off his ~25bb stack instead of shoving it. I read him checking again as kind of "making sure its still a monster" and I made the correct laydown. If he had quickly shoved or raised I may have gone with it, but I think he was tanking thinking about how to get the most from his KK+ range. At the end of the night we talked for a minute and he told me he had AA, I laid down QQ.

good point here about calculating 4bets vs jamming or sizing vs "potting" in other games. these sort of technical tells are the important ones to learn.

Yeah. When I was more inexperienced, I thought double-checking cards was generally a sign of weakness (e.g., if you have KK/AA, you're not forgetting what you have) -- but on the contrary, players often seem to want to just double-check.

I double check aces because I like looking at them

If I could throw my 2 cents in, I disagree that it is important to try to be stoic if you are green to tournament poker. I find that being relaxed and casual can be more confusing as there is so much more data for people to process and that guys who sit there with sunglasses and serious faces are the one's who's every action every twitch becomes so much more obvious.

I know this depends a lot and varies based on specific individuals but I strongly believe that the guys in the sunglasses, hoodies and super-serious faces are far more often than not the less significant players at any table.

Being stoic unconsciously reminds a lot of people that they are playing for a lot of money and is pretty unnatural and nervous mindset/body-language pose for most people. So forcing that unnatural behavior might be more likely to give off key information than simply reminding yourself over and over that you are playing a game of luck and that you will most likely get busted on a coin flip at some point and every hand isn't the final table of the WSOP main event.
People are reading your reactions and if you keep reminding yourself you are just making the best decisions and there is a ton of luck will do more to reduce your reactions than hiding behind a hoodie and staring everyone down.

Just my two cents, but I find the conventional wisdom that being stoic is a great default to fall back on to be rather questionable in a lot of people cases. You are playing poker, it's a game of lying and manipulation. If you don't think it is fun using your body language to lie and manipulate, you might as well play internet poker.

People recommend being stoic because it is easier to consistently display no emotion than it is to consistently display the same mix of friendliness and mood. Once you are exprienced, you will develop the ability to disguise your inner thoughts behind a superficial layer of friendliness or conversation. But until you develop that skill, it is better to stay quiet and consistent.

It is also a good idea to develop the same habit of looking at cards, pausing to consider, then acting (don't be obnoxious, maybe a three second pause). Then it won't be as obvious when you actually have to stop and think for real.

The whole idea is that you should act the same no matter what the action is or what your hand is.

And may I add that disengaged emotionally is a good habit to develop from day 1. The more you care about the hand, the more you might emotionally react.

Some guys are shivering when they get aces. But remembering all the times you got sucked out on and busted with aces can be a more natural way to stay calm than letting yourself be naturally excited and focusing on trying to go through a stoic ritual.

Ritual has value and it is good advice out the gate, I just want to give honorable mention to the idea of disengaging. The guys who are bored because, for example, they find the stakes too low, are some of the blankest slates.

++1

One benefit to online is....

Online, no one can see you shiver.

My problem isn't shivering upon getting aces, it is shivering when I win a big pot, but fortunately that happens whether I have bluffed or not.

**Grunch**

Preflop watch downtable to your left. Players on your right will tell you what they're doing with their bets, raises and folds. Watch downtable for any preflop tells and if you're paying attention you'll find some good ones. This will give you information you can use to steal blinds and pick up small pots, when you know the players with position on you intend to fold or are weak. It will also give you information when players are strong and / or intend to raise and can keep you from wasting chips with marginal hands.