What'd you guys think of the fairly obvious tell from Blumstein when he had the full house w/ T9 and bet the river vs. Pollak. Pollak started talked and smiling and said, "Sick turn" and "What are you on, Scott? Speak!" Blumstein said, "You're going to let me bluff you on national TV?" He had bet 8M into 40M, a small bet, and Pollak folded his straight.

Full hand history here, hand 101: https://www.pokernews.com/strategy/c...ands-28594.htm

I don't often see very reliable tells in the WSOP final table (this year was exception cause of Hesp), just because skill level and seriousness is so high usually, but this was a case IMO of a highly reliable tell, for a few reasons:

•*First, least important point; talking at all in that spot, is unusual and skews a lot towards relaxation/value. That's the least important point, though, because in this case it was prompted and being prompted makes talking in general more likely, no matter what. But still think loose speech from big-bettor at all does increase likelihood of relaxation.
•*It's what I call a weak-hand statement, and these are quite reliable indicators of strong hands. Weak-hand statement is just something that weaken's the speaker's range. This is a very clear example of one. A bluffer would hardly ever want to imply they could be bluffing, even jokingly. You might say, "Well, good players are going to be more balanced and switch it up," but in reality this hardly ever happens in serious spots, because it's just a risky game to play without knowing how your opponent will react to such a thing and good players avoid risk plays and err on side of being stoic. Weak-hand statements from bluffers are rare enough to where when I hear such things in high-stakes, serious spots, I am very confident of the meaning and have only a handful of times been surprised in the last few years, and that was only in cases where the player in question was known for being verbally tricky/weird in the first place.

I have a few more interesting hands that I'll try to write up something on in the coming weeks. Any interesting stuff you guys saw?

Goating a call. Ldo. Sick reversal potential.

If anything I think he should have picked up on weakness and shoved with the best hand to bluff shove.

And who cares about the tell when he only has a bluff catcher in a spot where Scott has 0 bluffs.

I think it matters even if we think he has no bluffs in his range. Assuming we think the behavior is meaningful and reliable. For example, if Blumstein had a straight or a non-nut-flush, IMO he'd be unlikely to do this because he wouldn't want to accidentally increase the likelihood of a better hand calling. While he might value-bet some decent hands on the river, I think he'd be uncertain enough to make this IMO very relaxed behavior here unlikely.