This hand happened maybe a year ago now, maybe 9 months, so I'm a little fuzzy on the details, which aren't important anyway. What is important is my opponents tell. My opponent was a middle aged foreign gentleman. European I think. I might have opened or iso raised a limper to something like $13 with AQo. I'm not sure if anyone called my raise or not, but this gentleman made a decent reraise to $53 or so. I wasn't sure what to do. We weren't super deep, less than 100 bb and I had an active image but hadn't observed much of my opponent.

So I decided to ask him a question.
"Do you like soccer?" I inquired.
"Oh yes." He responded. Europeans love soccer.
"What do you think of the recent FIFA scandal?" I continued my inquiry.
He replied with something to the effect of "let's just play the hand'.

His last response is a tell. What does it indicate and how would you play the hand out from here?

Engaged in the hand/serious. Indicates probable strong holding. fold.

His first response already told you that he's not interested in getting into a conversation right now. Your follow up question annoys both him and the rest of the table.

Unfortunately, that doesn't say anything about his hand, because both the thought about you going to fold or not fold could make him unhappy. This time he might bluff and think you are going to shove, next time he might have AA and think you are going to fold..

FWIW: If I see you do that a second time, I immediately call for the clock..

There's not many people who are not engaged in the hand after they limp/3bet to 26.5BB preflop. No matter if they hold AA or 72o.

From Caro's Book of Tells.


From my opponents unwillingness to discuss a current event which evidently was of some interest to him, I deduced that he had a weak hand. I reraised all in, he called, and AQ hi held up unimproved.


My opponent's light three bet was probably inspired by my wild table image. Advertising is an integral part of being a winning player.

For anyone who has not read or reread Caro's book of tells I highly recommend this work. It is simply an indispensable text for any aspiring poker player.

What were the stakes? 1-2? The fact that you're even considering 4bet shoving AQ at these stakes tells me you're massively spewing by overly relying on tells.

My "tell" on you is that it seems like you have some kind of romantic view of learning tells, that you should be making huge bluffs or calls when you sense weakness.

The reality is, tells are much more profitable and effective in more nuanced spots. For example, checking your opponents demeanor when you are OOP deciding whether or not to double barrel a whiffed AK on a low board. Its a play you would consider making anyway, but the tell could be the difference between pulling the trigger or not.

I congratulate your play, but since it happened almost a year ago, its hard to be sure how accurately you are even recalling the story, so not sure what the point of your post was. Maybe to plug Mike Caro?

I don't think that this opponent's verbal behavior in this spot would be a reliable indicator of either strength or weakness. Just my humble opinion. There's a lot of variety in these situations.

I don't think this is a tell. if I read your account correctly, he had acted, action was to you, and instead of acting, you were asking unrelated, irrelevant questions. His reaction could have easily been annoyance at you wasting time, or awareness that you were trying to induce a tell.

This tell is more reliable when a conversation or banter is going on, and the actor suddenly falls silent or changes personality(for example, someone who had been joking a lot suddenly getting serious and saying something like 'just play your hand').

yep fold baby