Small behavior from $2-5-10 game yesterday. These little tells pop up a lot. I call them "tells of clarification" for lack of a better category. I think they can be useful because a) they happen so quickly in the moment that the player isn't really thinking about his behavior that much, b) they're so relatively minor and unstudied that people aren't guarding against them much.

In this hand, I limped on the button in a 6-way pot. So it's 7 to a flop of Th 6h 5h.

We all check, but then the player two in front of me (an aggressive player) corrects us, because apparently we've skipped him and he hasn't acted. He says, "Whoa!" then bets $35 into $70.

I immediately think he probably has a strong hand and here's why:

If he were weak/vulnerable, he wouldn't want to draw attention to the fact that we've skipped him. Drawing attention to the fact that we've skipped him reinforces the idea that he could be betting due to the fact that two players checked behind him. If he were weak/vulnerable he would just want to bet without drawing attention to this idea; he would want to get full "credit" for his bet.

Not sure if I'm communicating this optimally, but here's another similar small clarification behavior. This is from a $5-10 game:

I raise pre-flop with KQ and get one caller in the big blind. He checks dark, which I don’t notice.

The flop is T-J-6. After a few seconds, I ask whose action it is and he says, “I already checked before the flop.”

In this case, the player is clarifying that he checked before the flop. If this player had flopped a very strong hand, like a set or top two, he’d be unlikely to emphasize that his check (a sign of weakness) came before he knew what cards were out. If he was very strong, he’d be more likely to just be quiet or just say “I already checked.”

The opposite pattern is more common and probably more understandable; a recreational player bets dark pre-flop and hits his hand huge on the flop. When given a chance, he emphasizes to his opponent that “I bet dark! I bet dark!” He is indirectly implying “I bet dark, so I could have anything; no reason to respect my bet.”

Obviously these small clues aren't 100% but they are right a lot. In the first hand, the player was aggressive and could have been quite wide. But getting this clue, you might decide to fold borderline hands or take a more cautious line.