by Author Name Withheld 123

Created on: May 22, 2010

How to read poker tells

Having the ability to read a person and find there tells is the difference between a good poker player and a great poker player. Every emotion that a person feels at the poker table or anywhere else can be shown through body language. Body language, tone of voice and facial expressions tell a story about what a person is feeling and thinking, although this can be controlled everybody gives off some signal that represents how they feels.

Reading your opponent in live poker is 100% of the battle and anyone who can master this is going to be the person with the chips at the end. Tells are difficult to control purely because they are completely natural and subconsciously made, only by learning to control your emotion and give off not physical signals you can hide your tells and become unreadable.

How to read your opponent

Understanding body language and picking up little hint of emotion in tone of voice and words they choose to say is the only real way to read your opponent. Basically anything that visually makes a person look nervous such as itching and moving around too much is a sign of weakness or discomfort about their position/cards. Everybody gives off signal with every body movement they make that is why all the best poker players in the world find it best to completely shut off and ignore everything that is happening at the table. Reading facial expressions from the corner of your eye so they think your not watching is a great way to pick up hints from what they do with their arms and most importantly what impression you get from their facial expressions. Any form of expression of body language is a tell in poker, a tell for how strong or weak their hand may be.

Talking poker

Many poker players such as Andy Black and Gold are fantastic at talking to their opponent to win hands.  Asking question that are hard to ignore usually bring out the emotion that you are looking for, if they answer they will usually give off some body signal or facial expression that will signify how they feel about their hand. Not every poker player will answer you and usually if you cannot control yourself and hide the strength you feel for your hand then it is better to not lead out and bet because there is a high chance an experienced player will take advantage of the information they may have got.

Overall you need to grasp a great understanding for the game and feel betting patterns from pre flop to the river. Once you understand the game 100% from math then you need to learn to read people from body language, this is something we all do anyway however practicing to read small details takes practice. Once you master how to read people then math has less value and winning and feeling comfortable at the table you are at becomes much easier.

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