Finished "Read Em and Reap" which was pretty friggin good.

I have now have some questions about some of Caro's Tells - great book, but written a while ago, and I need to verify if some of these are accurate. Please comment on the validity of these in today's poker games if you've got experience with any of these. I'm talking about the majority of the time - obviously, they will vary from player to player.



-Exposing cards
-Usually meant to convey strength – player is looking for an opponent to fold a hand, or prevent a call.


-When a player couples his bet with the words “I bet” in an optimistic/authoritative tone, good chance of a lesser hand/bluff.


-Reaching for a pot prematurely, keeping arms outstretched, opponent clearly hasn’t decided what to do yet.
-looking for a call


-Preparing to complete a bet – when last card drops, bet is completed w/o hesitation – strength.


-Player is keeping head straight, but looking at the bettor. – strength


-The friendlier a bettor is, the more apt he is to be bluffing.


-If a player bets and then looks back at his hand as your reach for your chips, he’s probably bluffing.



Please move if this is the wrong forum, but I couldn't find the exact place where this belongs.

YMMV.

-Exposing cards
-Usually meant to convey strength – player is looking for an opponent to fold a hand, or prevent a call.

You'll find that more often than not the exposed card is the meaningless one. Also, you'll notice it's a pair when the player doesn't peek again to pick the card s/he wants to show. When the player exposes to elicit a reaction to your bet, most of the time it's a fold.


Can you explain this a bit more? - I didn't follow.

Thanks again for the detailed response, that cleared alot up.

Caro's Book of Tells relates exclusively to the days when limit games ruled poker rooms. This makes motives for such a move dynamically different between NL and Limit.

My experience is that it is more often than not strength in limit games, and weakness in no-limit games....but there are exceptions.

In limit games players don't care about telegraphing strength as much, especially when they know they will get crying calls due to the pot odds (especially on 7th street or the River). So you see a lot of blind or insta betting for no other reason than everyone knows it's coming as an automatic move and the player betting often knows he's getting called no matter what. Sure it's strength, but you have to call often anyway when laid odds where you only need to be right a small fraction of the time to be profitable.

In No-Limit games, pounding the pot instantly or blind is much more risky for all the obvious reasons. My experience is that most of the time, the player is weak here. But watch out and know your opponents first - don't use this as a rule, only a guide.

Caro is brilliant, but here I don't agree. My experience in NL games where a player puts in a large bet and then peeks back at his cards while you go into the tank, that the vast majority of the time it's a lame attempt at telegraphing a reverse tell. Why would a bluffer look back at his cards after betting!!!! They are bluffing, so their cards shouldn't matter then, right?!!!

The motive here is to look weak (by virtue of the peek) when strong.

-The friendlier a bettor is, the more apt he is to be bluffing.

This tell is profoundly accuarte. If a player is relaxed enough to emote a smile, you know he's got a monster. Smiles are hard to fake. When you are stressed (as in when bluffing) a genuiene smile is very hard to emote.

I think I worded that wrong. When facing a bet, the opponent will show a card (the strong one) to get some read, but it usually means weakness, and when making the bet they show the weak card (a card pairing the bottom card... could be two pair, could be a set), which also means weakness most of the time.

Generally when the hand is in progress any card flashing means weakness, or at least villain thinks he's behind. After the hand it's different. A player showing a weakish card (bottom pair) usually has a strong second card. Then it's player dependent.

Thanks Harball and Monk.

I see what you mean there Hardball - I've seen a bunch of variations of the flashing card.

It is depenedent after the hand, but yeah, during the hand, I've never seen someone flash when they didn't think they were behind, though I'm sure it's possible to be the other way, have not witnessed it yet.