Last night at a $1/2/5 game a hand came up where the villain gave some clear verbal tells. I was able to exploit these to get away from AA with minimal damage. I really think Zachary's Verbal Poker Tells book is worth it's weight in gold. The hand below has several verbal tells including preflop and postflop which perfectly matched up with Zachary's advice from his book.
Hand history ($400 effective):
UTG straddles (very loose preflop, but mostly passive postflop 30 yr old guy)
3 limpers
Hero looks at A
A
in the SB and raises to $37.
UTG calls saying
"I'll call you light". Everyone else folds
Flop ($90) Q
J
9
Not my favorite flop, but because this guy is playing a huge range I want to get some value and control the pot size. I also have backdoor spades so I can check call some turns or keep betting.
Hero downbets to $30
UTG says
"I'll call you light again"
Turn ($150) Q
J
9
Q
Hero checks
UTG says
"Well I can't let you draw for free", then bets $100.
I think for a bit and say to him, "Is that why you bet, because you didn't want me to draw?".
UTG makes a joke about an earlier hand where he beat my JJ saying "If you have Jacks here you're good". He's chuckling a bit and very loose with his body as well when he's been more stoic in other pots.
I tell him "I don't have jacks... I have Aces" then fold face down.
He flips over the T
only and half mucks the other card but we're in the 7 and 9 seats and I can see the other card half on top of the muck. I ask to see the other card, and the player turns it over, a Q
.
----
I thought this was interesting because of how useful these small verbal comments were from the villain.
Preflop, his comment doesn't mean much but I felt it was a truthful statement. UTG had a medium strength hand and was in fact calling me light (he knew I was playing tight).
On the flop, he seemed to be making a misdirection with the comment "I'll call you light again", which was implying his hand was still weak. This lead me to believe he had significantly improved.
On the turn, before betting he made the classic misdirection statement for why he needed to bet, explaining he didn't want me to draw. His joke about Jacks was a bit of a goading statement as well. Lastly, with the $100 size that I frequently see as a "value bet" size, I felt like this was a fairly easy exploitative fold.