Tells
“Their” tell is anything your opponent does to give away their hand strength.
“Your” tell is any mannerism you inadvertently repeat that lets the other players know how good your hand is.
There are many, many tells. Your eyes can look the same direction when you have a good hand. Your face my flush when you have a flush. You might bite your lip when you bluff. Some players rush their bets when they have nothing, other players toss their bluffing chips into the pot but place their chips when they have a big hand.
Tells can be in your eyes, on your face, in your nervous legs. There are dozens of tells regarding your chips and if you talk at the table, well those verbal tells are endless and very hard to conceal.
Obviously, the ideal situation is that you get very good at reading other players tells and even better at giving off no tells yourself. You need to practice that poker face and learn to control your breathing and slow down quick hand move to your chips, and stop “tell”ing everyone what you have by talking so much. and … and… and….
Yes, there are endless tells and now for the even worse news, players will give false tells by doing the opposite of what you think their tell means. So the same tell might mean strong hand one time and weak hand the next. But reading players is an important part of the game, we will talk a lot about tells in the next several posts.
-This is Beginner’s Poker Forum Post #101
