1) If you ask "will you show me if I fold" and they say yes its always weakness

2) if they look at their chips right after the flop they want to bet because they love the flop

3) min reraises live are almost always the virtua-nuts

I have been playing live poker in casinos since 2002. Here is an exhaustive list of "reliable" live tells I have come up with:



























































































That concludes my list of "reliable" live tells.

Looks like you need to be more observant.

sweet, mines pretty similar

If the action comes to a player and they are unaware for 30+ seconds, then ask "Who's it on?" and proceed to bet when informed it's on them, they have a big hand.

I actually think this is one of the most unreliable tells unless you know your opponent really well.

This one's a gold mine. Learning to not watch the flop but instead to watch the other players watching the flop was a huge improvement in my game.

This is another VERY player dependent tell. Sometimes live players don't get pot odds and min raise a $40 bet because they think $80 is a big bet. Sometimes it's someone "raising to find out where they're at". I'm also seeing it used a lot more as a bluff against chronic c-betters.

4) My personal favorite is the "I'm weak sigh". I swear I've probably saved thousands of dollars by making big folds because my opponent: looks at my bet. Sighs. Looks at their hand. Sighs. Raises. I've never seen this as a bluff.

Looks like you should be more observant...

The point being that tells are simply not reliable. They are highly variable from player to player, level to level and from day to day. Any experienced live player can produce a laundry list of tells, but the idea that they can be reliably attributed to every player in every situation is very naive. Bottom line the skills of playing poker and reading people is very complex and not be simplified or reduced to the point of being applied widely.

The OP would be better served by saying "List tells that are generally correct".

My List of tells that can be generally applied.

• The speech... Generally means they have you beat.
  
• Weak is strong, strong is weak. Makes me lots of money from people that believe this is a reliable tell.
  
• Head out the window is generally the stone cold nuts.

What is HOTW?

looks like you accept every supposed tell for face value, that in itself is a huge error.

IMO I have never seen a single reliable tell, tells are never reliable. It can help point your decision in the right direction, and your decision process may be correct because of the tell, but its never a slam dunk.... in fact its never even close to a slam dunk.

This thread has been tried before, each time its tried it doesn't get very far because there are no reliable tells, every person is unique, there are some generalisations but you still must factor in their hand range, position, betting patterns, etc etc etc. The thing that makes me chuckle is that the majority of tell collectors historically seem to lack core fundamentals, they usually would be served far better if they focused on the mathematics at the current stage of their game rather than on collections of reliable tells. Its no secret that the vast majority of people who read Caro's book of tells, an antiquated book that equates the value of a tell to a dollar amount (total rubbish), are beginning players or bad players; of course there are exceptions to this reliable rule too ;-)

Don't get me wrong, I use tells every day, but they are usually 3% to 10% (in the best case scenario) of my decision process

Basically this is someone that is completely disengaged from everything happening at the table, because they do not have a worry in the world, after all they have the stone cold nuts. They will play trap poker or gun it, but they are very disengaged from the table, watching TV, talking to others, anything but focusing on the game. The dealer will have to prompt them for every single action after they achieve the nuts.

If I am first to act on a crappy draw that I don't want to have to call a bet, like a gutshot or something, I will often look at my chips before checking. No idea if it actually makes any difference.

I know a tell that is virtually a slam dunk in almost every case for every player. I suppose you want me to share that, huh?



Now I should say that this really applies for me during tournaments, especially when players are obviously either tightening up or waiting for something big.

A player who says "Oh well. Looks like its time to go home." and then pushes all in, has the nuts.

A good one is the player that just lost a big pot the hand before and then threebarrels the next hand.. he most often tilting and just want to lose his cash..

I think this is just a difference of opinion on what "reliable" means in this context. When I think of a tell as being reliable I mean >90% of the time it allows me to significantly narrow an opponents range of hands.

I don't think it needs to be 100% of the time I know the exact two cards my opponent is holding. Nor does it need to be 100% of the time I know what decision I should make. Even after narrowing an opponents hand range I may have to make a decision that is +EV but will sometimes be wrong.

For example, the "I'm weak sigh" by low limit players allows me to rule out bluffs. It also lets me rule out what that player would consider weak hands.

I see this used quite often as a reverse tell, depends on the opponent, stakes & game.

I've met very few people at the poker table that can successfully imitate the naturalness of the quick eyes to chip tell.

I don't see this tell that often, but when I do, I know that person has a monster.

I flopped quads a couple of months ago and as soon as I saw the flop my eyes jumped to my chips. I realized what I'd done and looked around the table and there was one solid player (not in the hand) that was staring at me and holding in laughter.

After the hand was over and I'd shown my hand (I doubled up on quads - how awesome is that) I turned to him and was like - "You saw that didn't you", he's like "Yup, I knew you flopped a boat."

Leave it to 2+2 to go off on an insane tangent of flame waring because I used the word reliable. I said MOST RELIABLE not THOSE TELLS WHICH ARE 100% ALWAYS CORRECT, EVERY TIME, NO MATTER WHAT, CAUSE POKER IS A GAME OF PURE KNOWLEDGE!


sheesh!

Tilt control?

I used that (super reliable never fails tell) once to my advantage, although in hindsight i figured it was kind of douchey. I had the nuts. Player two to my right goes all in. I know the player to my right still has to ponder the call, so i pick the chip off my card as though I'm going to fold. Since he "knows" i'm not going to call, it made his decision to call the bluff easier, and made me a lot of money.

So, once again, there's no such thing as a "reliable" tell. Everything is player dependent.

I actually got owned by this in cash game a few nights ago. Deep stack 1/2 we are on river, three-handed, and a guy who has been betting whole hand bets. I am in middle thinking if I want to call and third guy has his cards out like is ready to fold. I call and he insta ships! LOL.

LOL, just get so tired of the same lame flames in every thread all the time. Could any rational human really think I meant lets list all the tells which are 100% accurate at all time?

If a tell is 5% accurate thats 5% more info you have to make a decision.

I very seriously doubt that there is any tell that is across the board greater than 90 percent reliable for every player. Too many good players know these tells and use the reverse, and too many really bad players really do wear there cards on their face, but when you're playing with somebody for only a short period, and you don't know what kind of player they are, using a generalized "tell" against them is dangerous.

It's not that these tells aren't 100 percent reliable. It's that, without knowing anything else about the player, these "tells," are meaningless. Generalization is bad for your game.

Sure, maybe I wasn't precise enough, but I didn't mean 90 percent reliable for every player. I was thinking more like 90 percent reliable for a specific type of player. So if I'm playing against a guy that is clearly new to poker (not clear on the rules of poker, uncomfortable, part of a bachelor party, whatever) and he gives me the "weak sigh" before raising I'm very confident he has what he thinks is a strong hand.

Maybe 90% is still high, but even if it's 75-80% that seems pretty reliable to me.