Dare I attempt a serious discussion of live tells?

Kind of throwing this out there without high expectations but all the same, if anyone has any interesting thoughts I'd like to hear them.
Tells aren't a highly regarded part of poker, because usually they don't work. I think this has more to do with bad information than anything though.



I don't like most tells. I think there are a few major flaws:

They can be easy to fake
They can be well known
They can be based on bad logic

I don't like common tells. I don't know, maybe some of you guys disagree with me? Feel free to voice disagreement.

Common problem tells:
Shaking hands: Hands shake for an enormous amount of reasons in addition to fear and excitement.
Breathing patterns: Are probably the best known tells and are easy to manipulate.
Verbal lines: like "I'll show if you fold" can be intended to be helpful or manipulative, they require conscious thought to say which is a big problem.
Expressions of fear and aggression: Are often consciously reversed. Figuring out if it's genuine or not is often a guessing game.


Tells that are actually worth paying attention to, imo, either don't come from poker books or are hard to manipulate.

A good example of a well known one is that pupils contract when you see something you don't like and expand when you see something you like. Try and fake it in the mirror. Can't do it? Neither can most of your opponents.
Awesome tell!

How about that people's feet always point to what they want. Keep an eye out for it away from the table and you'll see what I mean.
Easy to fake? Yes. Commonly visible? No, but some guys stand up a lot during big hands, take a look at the way their feet are pointed. If it's towards the pot, be inclined to fold, if it's away, be inclined to call.
Were you aware of it before I explained it? Probably not, the same applies for your opponents.

Smiles are hard to fake and people smile a lot in a poker game.
You use different muscles to smile normally and to fake a smile. Learn to tell the difference. Even knowing how to distinguish between the two it's hard to fake a genuine looking smile, this tell is about as reliable as it gets.


We can go further... but I'm not putting much on paper unless I expect some good conversation in return.

There is another reason why tells are unreliable, even the good ones you mentioned.

While your opponent might like the flop or their hand you have to also know if they think hands like TPMK are the nuts and get all excited about it. Or maybe they love to get all crazy when they have a flush draw.

Tells are only good if you know what kind of player your up against and if you know that then tells become less important anyways.

Ok first really hard to read somones pupils for several reasons #1 if they are wearing sunglasses # 2 If I'm sitting in seat 2-3 and they are in seat 8-9 no way I can see that far across the table to see what their pupils are doing.

Where do you get that if someones feet are pointing towards the pot they are going to fold and if away from the pot they are going to call I don't see any corilation with those.

I think the thing you have to remember is when your playing live probably 85-90% of the people playing are not faking tells I can honestly say I have never even given a thought of trying to fake tells and I have played live for 10 years.

I think the the best advice is to pay attention to how players play certain hands and remember that so when you see them play a hand the same way you have an idea where they are. Paying attention to what players do is most important heres an example of what I saw a guy do and made the correct read because of it.

Guy was 3 players to my left and had the chip lead by far he had been playing very well and when he bet he usually had it I got into a hand with him that went like this: I was BB for $600 action folded to him and he raised 3x BB to $2400 SB calls I look down at 44 so I call Flop comes 2 2 K check check he C-bets and makes it $3500 SB folds I call thinking I'll see another card I had about 38k in chips, turn comes another K I check and he checks quick river brings J I once agin check hoping he checks and has like AQ he gathers some chips together to the tune of about $5500 and starts to put them in but pulls back looks at his cards and adds another $3000 to the stack then puts it in. I stop and replay the hand for a minute then it hits me why would he start to put in 5500 and then add 3000 after looking at his cards????????? The only thing that hit me was that he didn't feel I would fold for 5500 and thought I would fold if he made it 8500 so he didnt have any part of that board and I said call and quickly flipped over my 44 and he indeed had AQ. By watching the player put chips in I noticed him make the "balk" and I read it right.

yeah. the only thing i do, since i play at the same casino against a lot of the same people is try to get to know their habits, how they play hands and when. i just dont for the most part put much stock in tells. the only tells i may believe would be from the proverbial new guy who hasnt learned to disguise his play.

Mike Caro's book from like the 70's still holds up preatty well today. Check it out if you have the chance. Caro states that players can easily disguise their face, but their body language gives away the most information. I think its worth looking for tells because you probably wont be in most hands anyway.

However you could spend more time focusing on betting patterns and possibly get a better result. After reading his book, at times I have caught tells and made appropriate plays with them. But other times I have been completely off on my reads. Since seasoned players react way differently then rookie players.

I've gotta agree with Grossberger on the false tells point - unless you're playing in a very sophisticated game I don't think it's something you run into very often at all. Tell concealment, certainly. But actual "fake" tells just don't happen that often in my experience.

The feet one is weird too, can you explain the psychology behind it? I know there are definitely feet-related tells and I've used them myself live in the past but I've never heard of that one...

If I recall correctly Joe Navarro has a chapter on feet tells in Read 'em & Reap.

As indicated by grossberger, I don't have the opp to see other peeps' pupils so I don't rely on that much for information.

I agree with OzExorcist, false tells aren't too common unless one is playing @ high levels (which I'm not) as they require practice...for me, I think it would be easier to practice being 'robotic' (as done by Vanessa Rousso) than to practice false tells.

Mortis has a good thread pertaining to tells based on his personal experiences & observations here >>> Playing the Player; Live Play Tells - 5K post

I find that most of the time the tells that I catch are very small, slight, and are much more general than "points feet at pot" or "pupils dilate".

There have been a few times I've saved some money with tells, "poker sigh" was one of them. "When a player sighs, they usually have a monster." I have Q9 from BB, UTG limps, some folds, some limps. I check. Flop is QJ9r. I bet. UTG sighs, then raises. I ask him if he flopped the low straight, and he did surprised eyes.

Also "Surprised Eyes" is one I've got before. I have AKo from the buttom. MP+1 raises, folded around, I 3-bet, he calls. Flop comes, but I'm not looking at it, I'm looking at villain. As I hear the dealer's hand slide across the felt, his eyes open just a little bit wider for just a moment, then go back. He checks, turned out I hit the flop with top pair/top kicker pretty dry board (AT7r), but my gut says I'm beat, and I suspect villain for a set just from his eyes talking to me. He checks, hoping I'll c-bet, I check behind. Turn is blank, he checks, I check behind, river is a king. He fires out, I fold two pair face up and he was unhappy. So either he meryl streep'd me out of a 18 BB pot (and continued selling it after the pot was awarded) or his eyes saved me a stack.

In general my reads of villain are a combination of things, and not just one thing. For instance, villain sets a tendancy, then for some reason out of the blue, he's breaking his tendancy.

The covering of the mouth one usually does denote weakness in weaker players, but that's not a tell I'd be making decisions on against regs. Just tourists.

I made an almost sacreligious hero call a few months ago. Pot went down something like this... I'm UTG+1 with 44, raise to 2.3 BBs, several calls, Villain is one of the blinds, raises to 7 BBs. I call, several folds. Flop misses me, has a K on it, some mid cards, and presents a club flush draw.
Villain bets out. 12 BBs. I tack him for a standard continuation bet, and decide I will raise to find out if he hit (raise/fold situation). I make it 33.3 BBs, he snapcalls. I've read since that snap-calling is a tell that the player is drawing. I don't know if that's correct or not, but what I took away from it when we played the hand was that he didn't even consider raising, which told me he didn't have a K and wasn't concerned about me making the flush. The turn is a 3 and gives me an inside straight draw (K753 iirc, still only two clubs). Villain checks, I check behind, not wanting to get into a sticky situation to a check/raise or have him float and then connect on the river, a pair of fours doesn't have much show down value against his range. When I check behind villain gets surprised and... almost frustrated. Like he's either surprised that I'm not that strong, or he's sad he didn't get to check/raise. He even flailed his arm a little bit. I really got no information from this tell.
On the river, which was a brick, he stacks up about half the pot into one tall tower and slides it in. I felt that in his subconscious he wanted me to fold. I wish I would have been paying more attention at the time to what he was looking at, if he was giving me the 'bluffing stare' or not. But I felt that subconsciously he wanted me to fold. So do I raise? No. I only get called by hands that beat me. If I call, I'm really only beat by the K, or a PP, which I have reason to believe he has neither. And I offer him a side-bet that I could name his hole cards. He accepts, I guess AcQc, call him, and rake in a nice pot.

Player on my right later asked me if I called him because his hands were shaking. I didn't notice his hands were shaking. Caro would tell you to fold there, you're up against two pair or a set. Shaking hands can be anything that increases heart rate, blood pressure, adrenaline output, etc, and while my hands sometimes shake when I have a monster, they sometimes shake when I'm afraid, too. I find that the eyes are a window of knowledge. Which is why I strive to cover mine at the poker table.

And it would be bad business to go posting my own tells on here, but I've got a few that involve my eyes.


Now that the long story's over, has anybody ever caught somebody looking from the pot to an immediate glimpse at their stack when they're made big? I've heard about it, read about it, but have only seen it a couple times, and I didn't see the showdown for verification... I guess it should be enough that they won the pot each time.

As far as having a list of tells, they're individual and situation specific. However I find that my gut is right more often than my head... Maybe I've been feeding it well, but I hardly have a large collection of hands this year... Probably <2k live since the new decade rolled around, and I read Caro's book early this year.

Tells can be so dangerous because when you think you have someone down, they go and mess with your mind.

I've done it, It was pointed out to me that I let out a small breath before I continuation bet when I have raised pre-flop (AK or something) and miss the flop completely. I had no idea I did it but a drunken friend (I love this guy) had got into a discussion about it with another player.

Of course, now that I knew this it was great. I found myself in a hand with the other guy and I think we were one or two short of the bubble in the usual Sat night tourney. We were about the same in stacks, me possible slightly ahead. I raised preflop and flopped a monster. And as I was betting first, let out my little sigh and raised as you are supposed to. He pushed all in straight after me without thinking and looked a little upset at my insta-call.

So - I think there is more of an advantage in learning and managing your own tells than spending time on other peoples. Because, like what I did, they will eventually come to bite you hard.

Yep, it does. He calls them "the most honest part of the body".

I've said it a hundred times before and I'll probably say it a hundred more, BTW, but anyone who plays live NLHE and is relying on Mike Caro's Book of Tells instead of Navarro is crazy. Read 'em and Reap is about a bajillion times better written, it's easier to apply, it's got a much better grounding in actual psychology and it doesn't waste your time with tells that only apply to draw poker home games that nobody plays any more anyway.

Say what you will - but I have done great in live tournaments in Vegas in the past 2 weeks and I credit a lot of that to be able to easily read the players at the table.

I was playing a pub tournament a couple of weeks ago and got into a hand against a regular lady and another guy who I hadn't seen much of. The lady loves to chase her draws and I had a few little tells on her before this hand played out.

I had K,To on the button, the guy was in the big blind and lady was UTG. She limped in and I raised to 3x the blind and both of them called. Flop came K, T, 6 with two diamonds. They both didn't seem too interested as they checked to me and I fired a 3/4 pot sized bet out but they both called. The turn came 3 of diamonds and as soon as it hit the felt I saw the lady look up and out at the back wall which I knew she did when she makes her hand. SB checks and she bets so I fold my two pair convinced she made her flush. The river came down another Ten and I cringed but felt like I had made the right play anyway. She bet and he called the river and she turned over K,3 for two pair.

She had improved her hand on the turn so I made the correct read but I got it wrong as her hand was still worse than mine...

There are so many good points here. I wish I could get into all of them. But I'll say two things.

One. Without reading Navarro's book (have read some others....The Book of Tells, etc), I would imagine pointing of the feet sometimes allows you to lean in more. Our mind tends to go towards what we want and away from what we don't. Feet are a big tell.....in life. Think about it. When you are in a conversation with someone you don't like, check yourself. Bet one of your feet is pointing away. It's for flight....you don't want to be there, so you 'prepare' yourself to leave. If you like something or someone (interested in them OR the conversation), you typically lean in, feet planted forward because you don't want to go anywhere. If only Navarro said so, it would be one thing. But several books confirm the thought process.

Two. Many tells are grounded in the abnormal. You must first get a normal reading of the individual. What do they do when they are normal. When they are not in a hand. Then watch them in a hand when they have the goods. What do they do? THEN watch them in a hand when they bluff. What do they do? There should be some stark differences between the three. Comparing one against the other helps significantly. Sounds like a lot of work, but it's not. Just pay attention every hand.

This entire thread is very valuable and can help your live game. That being said, if you don't watch betting patterns, you are screwed. It is a much more reliable way of reading the hands (IMHO).

His basic theory is that feet can give away a lot of information about how comfortable someone is and because (among other things) they're under the table out of sight they're likely to be more reliable and easier to read than other signals.

What I really like about Navarro's book, and your post as well FWIW, is that it discusses the root causes of tells. I found Caro to be very superficial in that regard: everything is discussed in a poker context on the basis that strong usually means weak and weak usually means strong. Navarro discusses universal concepts like the freeze-flight-fight response that you've mentioned above and then goes on to look at how that can be applied at the poker table.

If you're already familiar with the subject matter then it might not introduce a whole lot of new ideas to you but I definitely recommend giving it a look.

So I'd love to know, now you've had a few responses - do you think it was worth attempting?

Hey I have a question, how do you look for tells without your opponents noticing? Sunglasses?

There's no need to sit there and stare your opponents down. Just by watching your opponents when they look at their cards or when they look at the flop you can pick up most of the little instant tells that they show.

Sorry about taking a while to get back to this. Like I said, I wasn't expecting much. Guess I was wrong.


Yes. Absolutely. There's also a huge diference in visibility between villains with blue eyes and brown eyes. For this reason if you've got blue eyes and you ever find yourself moving up in stakes, either do some major practice or wear sunglasses.
Also watch out because I swear in a high tension situation it's easier to contract/expand your pupils.

Good regs do. I don't know anything about you but you come across as someone who's either good or capable of being good, I'm surprised you don't give off fake tells, it's really easy for people to watch your blink rate or breathing rate, and as long as you're probably giving off an obvious tell like these you should be giving off fake ones too in order to make your tells less reliable (mixing information and misinformation).


I have, and I really disagree with it. It's like a joke book. 90% of the content can be flipped around and gain reliability. People fake stuff, they're playing poker and tells is a major part of the experiance for fish, and regs should know well enough to fake stuff.

It's the same source I got the information from (actually, one of his youtube videos).
I never researched it further because I didn't need to.



lol, awesome. I think I worded the original post really badly (I sounds more like "tells suck" and less "let's discuss tells") but any tells thread that has something useful in it has gone well.


I'll ramble on in a while about tells (because this response isn't long enough already and double posting is fun).

What's wrong with them noticing? It puts them under more pressure (makes tells easier to see).

You only look like an idiot if you get it wrong.

Alright. Let’s see if I can make this coherent.

To simplify matters, I’m going to break this down into separate parts of the body. Also, no one should take anything I say here as fact, take it as a suggestion and test it yourself.
Eyes:
These windows to our souls aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Although it is possible to notice things like avoidance behaviour in someone looking away, it is also very easy to fake.
There’s also a well known and sparsely practiced theory on the direction people look to access various parts of their brains, the problem with this is that it’s not consistent from person to person. That added to the fact that tells invariably come down to interpretation and it’s difficult to put to much use.
You will notice however that starring down opponents will force a response. Some will respond with a wise crack, some will avoid eye contact, and rarely someone will just stare you down, essentially what you’re looking for is either a behaviour that is either consistent or not with their character (if they’ve walked over to the table, sat down and played half a hand, you should have a fair estimate of their character without much effort).

Random edit without paying attention to context: Eyes are awesome for getting a read on someone but it's usually more to do with assessing their character and confidence. They can also go a long way in determining if something is honest or not but it usually takes some background information on your opponent for this to work.

Mouth:
Possibly the best indicator of moods. A LOT of normal things go in and out of mouths, air, speech, food, water, fingers, fingernails/pencils/pens, etc. People get careless and express things more willingly and honestly with their mouth than most things.
People putting things into their mouth tends to be a good indicator, you know how when you were a little kid and always chewed on the end of your pen and then stopped abruptly when someone told you that people do use it to reinact being a baby and feeding from their mother? When someone sticks something in their mouth in the same manner, consider it the same as them curling into the fetal position.
Tone of voice tends to be reasonably reliable, just watch out for loud/strong speech which is easy to fake under most circumstances. A nervous and shaky voice on the other hand isn’t something people consciously use very often and as such, can be difficult to fake.
Also note that people salivate when they’re either about to eat. They do the same when they’re expecting to rake in a pot. When someone licks their lips, be prepared to fold.
Neck:
Of primary interest is swallowing. It’s difficult to swallow naturally when you’re worried about making sudden movements and particularly in high pressure, someone swallowing noticeably can be a big sign of weakness. It is however easy to fake.
Hands:
Hands lie. Basically everything you do with your hands is conscious. I should know but I’m not sure, I think well rehearsed stuff is technically unconscious, doesn’t matter though because we still have to concentrate so frequently on hand movements. People are aware of their hands.
The tells related to them that I like are when someone covers a vulnerable body part, genitals in particular but not overly useful at the poker table, heart and neck are good too though. Obviously this indicates weakness. People don’t tend to think about what they’re instinctively covering.
Hands doing complex tasks like chip tricks tend to break down in high stress, be aware of when they stop halfway through a trick or just freeze up. High stress doesn’t necessarily mean one thing or the other, but in the moment knowing that your opponent is in high stress can be useful.
Note that there’s some stuff about how far out people place chips when betting. Close means they still think it’s theirs and far out is supposed to be over emphasising their strength. Meh, this is rubbish. A lot of people will be too afraid to extend themselves far even when bluffing, others will at least sometimes be trying to place chips in the same spot.
Forehead:
Just a quick mention, the frontalis muscle (forehead) contracts in many different circumstances, wrinkled foreheads are great billboards of unintentional misinformation.

Another random edit: Just because it's worth mentioning, when people speak and shake their head "no" at the same time, which happens really often, means what they said was dishonest. It can be faked but it basically never is.



Eh.... 677 words. This isn’t supposed to be a book so I’ll end it here.
Let me know what you do/don’t agree with.

Who the heck writes so much in one post??????

Somebody who LOVES poker and is always trying to get better AS WELL AS helping those around them.....that's who!

AMAZING and helpful post. Not sure how to give this 5 pokerstars as yet, but I'll figure it out.

As I said before, study betting patterns, but if you are looking for information about tells, the Kid just taught a session and a half.....

Thanks PK!

Actually I think the main point that "PK" is trying to make - assuming that by PK you mean thepokerkid123 - is that most poker tells can be faked, so don't believe them.

You will never have an absolute truth in tells and that's a fact! Cuz everything you stated here is1)now known to us and can be faked, 2)not applicable to everyone.Why?
Cuz people can be stressed if they have a good hand AND if they are bluffing...So what's the difference?+ Good players lie to themselves when bluffing and actually believe they have the hand they're representing so their behavior would be a false one for you to read from.

And a lot of this stuff might be psychologically correct but it depends on the background and the culture...NOTHING is 100% sure!I might have a habit of putting something in my mouth when I am winning whereas my friend does this when he's bluffing.

So again, how can you be absolutely sure of any reads when people can fake them, or give out the wrong info, or obliviously give their "wrong" emotions in response to both bluffing and winning?You just can't!
You can however play tight for some time and watch every hand closely and watch how each particular person acts before folding,calling, raising a certain amount, showing their bluffs(if they do),going all in, and when they show down their hands...And you might be involved too if you have the nuts or if you're not too committed. After that you pick up on the players and you'll have to see who's capable of faking their tells and who's not, of course some trial and error is in order(but not always by you). And after an hour or so, you could have reads on the whole table(and hopefully made some money or lost very little), and you should be sure of them, so you can now proceed to make full advantage of them!

I read many posts and articles on live tells and such and it might be sometimes useful on some persons, however, I find that my technique is always useful and gives me very good results...That's why I'm so much better live than online . I actually have much more information than I have online (there's only timing,bet sizes,and previous action...).

That being said, every informative post is a good post! And you actually had a very good conversation in return !

Responses in bold.

I agree on some things but still: Blinking, heart rate and unconscious actions come out of stress. I dare you to know if he's stressed because he's bluffing or if he's stressed because he has a monster hand and wants you to bet or call him...Some people don't even know what they want because they're amateurs or just acting stupidly .Thus you don't have a sure read on them...

I think people are negating tells because they think that people use them like every movie we have ever seen. He sits down, you see a tell and then use it to milk him for all his money.

I've never seen them like that. I mean, if you know what he has, you know what he has. But poker is a game of incomplete information. If, when you are stuck, you can look to a tell to provide ancillary information, it becomes helpful.

And yes, tells are different based on who you are and where you grow up. North Americans nod their head up and down to signify 'yes'. South Asians (Indians) tilt their head from side to side (similar to a bobble-head -no disrespect intended) to signify 'yes'. That's why you have to watch them while you're NOT in the hand to collect the information needed. Once you see what they do normally, you can compare it to what is abnormal. It's NEVER 100%.....but heck, I'll take 70% anyday!

Pupil size also is affected by medications a person may be taking too...so don't rely totally on that. Also the nervousness of a person can be from the same or just from feeling stressed in a new situation. It doesn't necessarily tell you everything about that player's abilities or cards in hand!

I agree with everything you said about live tells, especially that they can be faked and misunderstood, because it has happen to me ):

No more additions? "yeah, I look for this...", "I've noticed that regs start looking for tells at Xnl they can be mislead by...", "I think to apply tells well you need to estimate it's reliability and apply that to their range like such..." (the last one is pretty much viewing tells the same as we do combinatorics)



And to respond to the latest posts:
That's just it. Most of what I wrote isn't looking for stress... well, it is, but it's more precisely positive or negative. If he's licking his lips (and he hasn't been sitting there doing that a lot while not in a hand) then I'm taking it as "he's got a hand he wants to value bet" and not "he's stressed".

Exactly.
Anyone who doesn't think fish pay attention to tells should look through the threads here on CC and see the newer players all saying "I had this guy on -insert specific hand-". People don't start playing poker to start narrowing down ranges and figuring out game theory, they start playing poker in the style it was written in super system and it's advertised on t.v poker, they want to stare their opponents down and make a hero call or bluff. They want to reinact what they saw in Rounders.
I think they care more about tells than they do about pot odds (and most fish do know pot odds, even if they have dumb ideas about applying them), that's why I don't like using tells that you're likely to read in a top 10 tells list.

That is a new one to me. Glad you mentioned it.
Mind you, wouldn't the medications simply make their pupils less responsive? Since we're looking for changes, we're more likely to just not see anything than be mislead? Dunno, just throwing it out there.



Just some random other comments, and FWIW, I don't know why I keep rambling on and sharing information but I guess I'm still hoping for more in return.
Some common problems with tells:
Foreign people. This isn't racist (for one, I'm foreign to 90% of you guys). As was already mentioned, they can have different mannerisms but in addition to that, they do all look the same at first. What I mean is that for a long time I was terrified of tables full of people of a certain skin colour, wonderful people as most of them were, if you haven't spent a whole lot of time around people of a different ethnicity it's really hard to see subtleties. The sollution is just to spend heaps of time with them and eventually different muscles will start standing out in their faces.
Also, old guys. Some old women too, but men are worse.
You know when their face looks like it's turned to leather and just doesn't move, it's just frozen in a permanent scowl? Also, possibly just because I'm a young bloke but you get some of these old timers who get offended by the millions of wannabe-internet-pros who play too aggressively for their liking, and they just look angry all the time. These old guys reduce me to just playing poker (pretty much treating it as online poker), and it's lucky that they're all so horrible at the game. If anyone has a sollution to this, I'd like to hear it.

Then you've got drunks who you don't really need tells against, and I guess if you played poker seriously against friends/family it'd be hard too (easier to be objective when there's an emotional distance).

C'mon get serious bajillion is not a real number. Since I own both Caro's and Navarro's books, I can give a real estimation. Navarro's is about 4.2 million times better than Caro's.

Bajillion sounds bigger than 4.2 million. I'd go with bajillion, but I don't think you're too far off.

I don't remember exactly what I said, I'd merely said I'd read the book, not that I valued any information from it.

The book is dated and has a ton of references to limit poker. And is dated. And has a ton of references to limit poker.

A lot of good info on thread.

I think body tells (eyes, mouth, breathing, etc) can be easy to fake and are sometimes unreliable. When I look for tells on people, I look to something that they're probably not consciously paying attention to.

For example what a player does after they look at their cards. At a home game, there is a player who does one of three things after she looks at her cards. She never waits, she looks at them as soon as she gets them. If she is going to fold, she puts her cards next to her stack. If she is going to call, she puts one chip on her cards. If she is going to raise, she puts her hole stack on her cards and takes from the top.

Sometimes they way people bet when they're bluffing or have a strong hand will change and can be a good tell. I picked up a self tell when I was playing and realized that if I'm bluffing, i'll take a stack, count out a bet in stacks of four, restack, count out again, restack, then slide the chips in. If I have a made hand, I count out a bet in stacks of four, restack once, then bet. I'm right handed, so now I just do all my betting with my left hand and try to keep everything as similar as possible.

Yeah, good point. There are some blatantly obvious habbits that we can let slip.

A few of mine:

When I first started using a card protector I hated putting it on top of my cards and then taking it off just to fold around 80% of the time and consequently spent about a dozen sessions putting a chip on my cards only if I wasn't expecting to fold. I randomised it a little by leaving the chip until the last second some of the time and putting it on and folding once in a while, but it was still pretty bad.

I was also a bit rusty after spending most of the early part of this year playing online and for a few sessions was verbalising bets with air and just counting them out when I had a hand.

For a long time, despite being aware of it I'd fall into the habbit of folding my arms when playing tight (because you're folding and doing nothing so much it's easy to fall into this when you're a nit) and having my hands sitting on the felt when I was playing loose (because they're always doing something). This one actually applies pretty universally, imo, at least with people who aren't paying much attention and is a good guesstimate of your opponents when you first sit down.


FWIW, the best defence against giving these off is to randomise them. Be aware of them and give off false signals as often as you give off useful information, it makes reading you much harder.
One of the more obvious signs that someone is doing this (note that it's pretty much only decent regs who'll give of false info) is deep breathing. Typically rapid breathing means a hand and held breath means a bluff, this one is courtesy of Mike Caro's book of tells and like most of them is so often manipulated that it's not reliable (maybe against the guy who's never played before, but he's the only one I'd use this against on the first time I see him do it), but that someone takes the effort to fake this will tell you that they're probably giving off other fake tells too. And no, you don't naturally accidentally do this tell the other way around, that goes against instinct. Once I see someone is giving off false info I'm pretty much done with trying to pick up tells on them, I'll only look for stuff that I think is more advanced than they're likely to be aware of but that cuts down (a lot) on the frequency of actually seeing something.

So yeah, giving off false tells is a pretty good defence if you're playing against regs who aren't brain dead (and let's face it, even amongst regs they're the minority).