Wouldn't be interesting having a thread about Live Tells? I apologize if already there is one. I know there a "few" books about it, but it wouldn't hurt if live players tell their stories.

This could be to post and describe tells…

1. that you picked up in someone and/or

2. recurrent physical behaviors/movement patterns that you have observed more than one time and that can indicate something in particular.

3. and if you feel inclined to do so, verbal tells as well.

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I picked one and I have noticed that is very reliable, no matter who's doing it, at least in 1/2 and 5/3. And it goes like this:

Sometimes, somebody who's reaching for chips can't decide right away if he's raising or calling, takes a few chips with a super quick back and forth hand movement, that lasts less than a split second, and finally decides just to call. It's ALWAYS a monster, at least the times I have observed it. PF is KK or AA, OTF is a monster hand likely a Straight/Flush/FullHouse.

Never failed. So, if someone has seen himself doing it, the most likely remedy against it is to stop rushing to play back before deciding what to do.

Live tells are overrated and dangerous because you need to establish baseline behaviours before using them and then theyre still unreliable lol cuz usually you dont know if villians are producing the tells due to excitability from having the nuts or excitability from THINKING they have (what they may consider) the nuts or excitability from bluffing :O

best live tells are bet sizing tells

that said there are some pretty solid ones to pick up on and i really like the one you gave as an example although we should ALWAYS be careful with using the word always

Live tells are like icing on cake. When every aspect of your game is A, live tells make your game Aplus. Unfortunately 99% of players at llsnl (that includes you OP and of course myself) has Grade C game. So instead of wasting your time and energy on live tells, spend it on other aspects of game. It would be thousand times more +EV.

If you really want to get into it I suggest Blake Eastman and Beyond Tells https://www.facebook.com/BeyondTells?pnref=lhc
He did a lot of work establishing baselines and delving into the science behind live tells.

These threads often get locked, but I actually think it's a good idea for a thread IF we approach it the right way.

We shouldn't make blanket statements such as, "Whenever someone scratches his nose he has a monster."

BUT we could simply report on single instance observations. Essentially, we'd be collecting data, and analyzing it later.

So an ideal post would be something like, "Last night I saw a guy breathing normally pre-flop, then breathing heavily post-flop. He had 56 and had flopped a full house."

We don't really need to infer much more from there. Simply state the empirical facts, then maybe we'll start to see some trends.

What others have said is absolutely true. It takes time, skill, observation, collecting, analyzing, verification. If you play in live cash games or tourneys and happen to see a lot of the same faces, that's a great learning ground, start there. Definitely no 'one size fits all' answer.

This +1. I don't know why this found so much resistance.

The problem with a thread like this is that it gets so clogged with extraneous messages like this one. I think it's a great idea, but it would need to go somewhere that it won't get muddled up with anything but tells, and it would have to be in a consistent format to make it easy to reread. Like a PG&C thread where a contributor writes once sentence about the tell, and then a simple hand history.

Anyway, that probably won't happen or may happen and get lost after a couple weeks, so i'll contribute one to this thread.

Neck pulse visible after betting is almost always a weak hand or bluff.
Neck pulse visible before betting is usually a monster.

I might we weird but my neck pulse beats hard whenever I have a monster or a made hand I am value betting, but never when I bluff or semi-bluff (I seldom bluff on most 2/4-5/5 tables)

I have read that the opposite is usually true of people.
Also weird because my heart never beats like this in online play, only in the live environment.

IMO, the responses so far are dead on. Although live tells have saved me a lot of money, Ii firmly believe that paying attention to things like bet sizing, etc., is a better use of your energy.

I'm not saying we shouldn't pay attention to tells, or study them [I have a book I review a few times a year], but they are a two edged sword. That's why I believe Alexandar & ironmike's comments go hand in hand.

That being said, there are a few I'll give that I have found to be true for the last 2 decades I've played:
1. Young [new] rec players will sometimes light up like a neon sign when they hit the flop big. I'm reminded of the time in 1999, playing 5/10 limit hold 'em in the Taj when I flopped a set of Qs, bet, a young player [under 24] who already seemed excited, raised, everyone folded, I 4!, he lite up like a neon. He couldn't wait to bet on the turn after I checked.

He had flopped a set of Ks. I called him down, because this was the 1st time I'd noticed this phenomenon, but it was the last.

Older players [in their 50's & 60's] react more slowly, just like they do in everything else in life - such as reacting to the car in front of them slamming on the brakes. Therefore, it doesn't apply as often.

In general, I find that when players act in a way that they have not acted to date, after making a substantial raise, or preparing to do so, that they have a strong hand.

These are generalizations though & I can't say that over the course of time playing live that it has proven to be correct X% of the time. Just that it has been proven enough for me to rely on it. Then there's the problem of trying to convey exactly what I mean in print.

Garick made a comment on another thread [concerning bet sizing] that went sort of like this:
When V leads out with a bet on the turn into me [HU] that is the same size as the bet he led into me on the flop, I'm raising with the vast majority of my holdings & usually taking the pot down right then.

I'm paraphrasing, but that gem is a lot more valuable to me, than the worth I put on trying to convey to you that people who act in a totally different way than they usually do.......

I think reading a book on tells, studying the players & identifying what mold specific opponents fall into is the right way to go.

The problem with threads like this is that they meander all over the place. OP, if you want to write a COTM on tells, put your name on the list in the containment COTM thread. You'll write something up that gives you best information, have a mod approve it and then it will go up and be a sticky for a month.

If 2+2 ever went with a Wiki approach, then such a Wiki would be a good idea.

Locked.