| 09 Aug | Be careful with poker tellsPosted by PokerBarney on 11:39PM, 9th Aug 2007Permalink |  Send to a friend |  RSS feed |
One of the crucial skills required in poker is that of bluffing – the ability to make your opponents believe that you have a much stronger hand than you actually have and inducing them to fold. It follows that the skill should also include the ability to tell when your opponent is bluffing. The proverbial poker face is quite rare. Expert player can discern tell tale signs made by their opponents. These signs reveal what the opponents think of their own hands. In poker parlance these signs are known as “tells”.
There are many common tells. Eyes are dead give-aways. A good hand warrants a longer look. Players want to make sure that they have seen right. A body tic, especially on the face is usually an indication of a weak hand. Some players exhibit tells when they are bluffing. Flexing of muscles, eye pupil dilation and raised voices are common behaviour when bluffing. But players who exhibit such tells know that they are exhibiting tells. Hence they develop antidotes for the tell. They induce such behaviour at times even when they actually have good cards.Consider the following scenario. A player knows that his index finger twitches when he bluffs. On two occasions he bluffs with a weak hand. The opponents observe the finger twitching and realise that it is a tell. Then some time later he gets a good hand. He induces the finger to twitch. The opponents think he is bluffing and keep betting. The player makes a killing. The seeds of doubt are sown. Next time the finger twitches the opponents will not know if it is a real tell or an induced tell.
This is precisely what happened in the 2006 version of Casino Royale. James Bond identifies a tell in Le Chiffre’s behaviour. But Bond reckons that Le Chiffre is too seasoned a player to have a tell and thinks that Le Chiffre is bluffing with a weak hand. Bond bets to the hilt and gets cleaned out. Bond, being Bond, gets a buy back in and beats Le Chiffre the second time round.
There have been other movies that revolve around tells in poker games. David Mamet’s House of Games (1987) is a class example. A gambler called Billy visits an eminent psychologist Margaret. He is in danger of being killed by a gangster Mike to whom he owes money. Billy takes Margaret to Mike, who offers to waive Billy’s debt if Margaret accompanies him to a poker game and read his rival’s tell. Margaret’s professional instincts are aroused and she agrees. While the game is on she is sure that she has identified the tell. In a later deal she asks Mike to go all out and even funds him with $6000 of her own. As expected she loses. Later she finds out that all this was a con, including Billy’s visit to her clinic. Rounders, a 1998 movie revolves entirely around poker. In the climax, the protagonist Mike needs to win a large some of money quickly from a KGB agent. Mike identifies the agent’s tell and is up $60000 but needs to win much more. He informs the KGB agent that he has read his tell. This infuriates the KGB agent and put him in a state that poker players call a “tilt”. The player then is incapable of playing rationally. In the last deal Mike holds an 8 and 9, while the flop is 6, 7 and 10. Mike slow pedals his bets and goads the JGB agent into wagering his entire bankroll. Thereby Mike wins in grand style.
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