NVC & Poker
Tells
'Poker – deception
and perception' by Linda Spencer
It is a common misconception that
the game of poker is all about bluffing, gambling and sheer luck.
Of course, there are elements of these within the game. But poker
is a game of people, played with cards. At times it is
psychological warfare, played out on a field of green baize with
chips as ammunition. The truly great players are not just lucky
gamblers. Instead, they appear to have near psychic abilities to
detect what cards the other players at the table have. An excellent
player has the ability to be able to manipulate the other players
into making decisions that favour him. It is having the ability to
understand and interpret instinctual human behaviour which is more
of a pre-requisite to playing good poker than being dealt a pair of
Aces every hand. This article will not equip the reader with the
skills necessary to play the game. It is an exploration of how
being able to interpret non verbal communication (NVC) can give
poker players an enormous advantage over the rest of the
table.
Any behavioural pattern that a player exhibits which can tip you
off to what they hold is called a ‘tell’. Even the most
novice player is aware of this – hence the archetypal
‘poker face’. After all, when you have the best hand
and are all set to rake in a nice big pot of chips, you
aren’t exactly going to grin from ear to ear and look chuffed
about it until
your opponents have called your bet.
Otherwise they would know you had the best hand and would fold
theirs in an instant, which would lose you their money. Your
explicit and conscious NVC is kept to an absolute minimum at the
poker table. It is therefore the art and the challenge of the game
to be perceptive and intuitive enough to be able to pick up on
small unconscious mannerisms and peculiarities in people. In
Communication Studies, these mannerisms and pecularities fall into
one or more of the following categories: eye contact, proxemics, orientation, facial
expression, gesture, paralanguage, posture and
dress.
There have been many excellent books and articles written on the
subject of ‘tells’. Indeed, the most common ones are
such universal knowledge now that exceedingly cunning players
deliberately drop a few ‘false tells’ in during the
course of the game as a ruse. You have to be as cunning as a
fox!
Perhaps the most common ‘tell’ known is the “weak
means strong, strong means weak” one. For example, with
“weak means strong”, a player with the best hand may
show disappointment – by sighing, pulling a face or slumping
slightly in his chair. Some players exhibiting this may also bet
weakly – trying to demonstrate that they don’t have
confidence in their hand (but actually trying to make it cheap
enough for other players to be tempted to call). This player will
not want to do anything to discourage other players from
contributing to the pot (how many chips are available to be won at
any given point). The player will therefore be pleasant to you if
you speak to him, and announce his bet in a quiet to moderate tone.
In my opinion, the most dangerous of these signs is for a player to
audibly sigh as he is betting or calling a bet. I have found that
it always
means he has a better hand than
me.
Conversely, a player who is trying to represent a good hand and
bluff at the pot in an attempt to win it, will demonstrate some
quite aggressive body language. He will almost certainly keep a
very straight face, often with very tense features. Jaw muscles are
a good giveaway as they tend to tremble slightly as the player
keeps their mouth firmly shut. The way this player will bet will
usually be very quickly, as if no thought needed to go into it.
They will often move their chips quite forcefully into the pot
– often announcing the amount bet quite loudly. The amount
bet is often quite large or the absolute maximum allowed. Since it
seems that so many players are aware of these danger signs, it is
interesting that players still do them. This is because they are
unconscious – but therefore quite subtle to detect.
Poker can be a very boring game at times and it is tempting to
‘zone out’ for minutes at a time whilst waiting for a
playable hand. However, not being involved in a hand is a perfect
opportunity to be observant of the non-verbal communication which
takes place with the other players.
When I sit down at a table for the first time I try to make a
mental note of each player seated with me and try to
‘classify’ them into types. When I am observing
somebody I will note if they appear to be a confident or a nervous
type of a player. Are they verbose and extrovert or do they keep to
themselves and not engage their neighbours in casual chat? The
person who has barely said a word all night and then asks
“How much to me to call?” has got the winning hand, no
doubt about it. He has received an unaccustomed burst of confidence
and simply cannot help showing it.
Nervous players are notoriously ‘tight’ – meaning
that they only play premium hands and can be bullied (and bluffed)
relatively easily. A player who is losing money very often begins
to play rashly in an effort to recoup their losses (in poker
terminology, this is “going on tilt”). This happens
more with the egotistical and raucous players at the table and can
be heaven sent as they will generally tend to call bets even when
they know they are almost certainly beaten, as a last act of
desperate optimism.
More conservative personalities tend to ‘tighten up’
even more when they are losing money – which is also an
advantage as they simply will not risk their chips unless they know
for certain that they will win the pot. And in poker, quite often
you just have to take a chance.
The disconsolate player who looks gloomily into his empty wallet or
announces he won’t be throwing any more money away at this
game is basically announcing to the more wily members of the table
“I can be bullied and bluffed off of anything other than the
most premium hand. Take my chips Guys!!” But of course he
doesn’t realise he has just exposed his weakness. Losing
money is a painful process and it takes a lot of strength of will
to not let it bother you. There is a powerful psychology to poker
because it tickles the most visceral parts of one’s
personality. No one likes to lose – especially when there is
money involved – and it is difficult to remain dispassionate
and controlled. Recognising the player who is beginning to feel
defeated and negative enables one to ‘stick the boot
in’ to them as often as you can. It’s a brutal
game!
The way that a player stacks his chips is often thought to be a
sign of what sort of a player they are. People who stack their
chips in neat piles, according to value/colour may well be quite
tight players, methodical and organised in their decision making.
Players with one big haphazard stack of chips might be looser in
their style of play and tend to bluff more. Players tend to fiddle
with their chips a lot during a game – the noise of chips
clacking together can be a bit like Chinese Water Torture at times.
But chip fiddling can also be a tell. When a player is considering
calling a bet but he feels he has the inferior hand, he may count
his chips into piles and then restack them again thoughtfully. He
just doesn’t want to let them go. Even if he does call, he
can probably be pushed out of the pot with another big bet from his
opponent. He’s not going to go through that reluctant process
again. The player who calls the bet by swiftly counting out the
amount with no sentimentality, expects to be getting them and some
others back when he wins the hand.
Smoking is the number one pastime of the profligate gambler and
provides a useful tool for the ‘tell spotter’. A fellow
poker player once gave me a tip to watch the way that people smoke
during a hand. A smoking player making a bluff will tend to take a
big lungful of smoke but hold it in for longer and then exhale
really slowly. This technique is often used by people, whether
playing poker or not, as a relaxation technique hence its
propensity to signify anxiety.
Sometimes it is useful to have some prior knowledge of how many
players after you will be playing their hands. It is generally a
good tactic to watch the other players as they get their cards
dealt to them. Those that are smoking, drinking or eating will
usually pause with this and free both hands instinctively as they
are ready to play. If they continue to postpone their
coffee/fag/sandwich whilst they are still in the hand this can be
sign that they may well have you beat.
Watching people’s eye contact usually yields some common
tells. Most players habitually don’t make eye contact with
the other players during a hand, so it is worth watching for when
they do
and making a mental note of
why they did it. For instance, did they stare
directly at another player because they wanted him to call or
because they were trying to be ‘aggressive’ with a bad
hand? The way players look at the cards may also provide some
valuable hints.
In Hold ‘Em Poker, players are dealt two cards each which
they look at but keep face down on the table. A total of five cards
are dealt face up on the table, which are ‘community
cards’ – meaning that all the players can use them when
making the best five card poker hand. When the community cards are
dealt, a player that continues to look at them rather than at the
other players is less likely to have made a good hand. It is almost
as if he is willing those cards to change into something different.
I tend to watch for the players who quickly glance at them and then
either show disinterest and look away or look at the other players.
This generally means that they have ‘connected’ with
the cards in some way – usually a strong hand. Similarly, a
player with a good hand may glance down at his chips and then at
the chips of his opponents. This is almost certainly an unconscious
gesture, as the player is trying to quickly work out how much he
can extract from his table mates.
Hand gestures are another unconscious yet common tell. Play moves
clockwise around the table and each player must wait his turn to
act (check, bet, call or fold). Some players who have no intention
of playing will often make a tiny movement with their cards pushing
them ever so slightly away from them, way before it is their turn
to act. The player who has every intention of playing will
generally keep at least one finger on his cards. This player may
also be fingering his chips speculatively, or at least looking at
them. When a player ‘checks’ (which is an option if
there has been no betting during the hand) it is common practice to
tap the table rather than verbally announce “Check”.
Players do this in a variety of ways – with two fingers, with
the flat of their hand, with a clenched fist or with the side of
their hand. Sometimes, a deviation in a player’s particular
checking mannerism can give a clue to what they are holding. For
instance, a player holding a strong hand may ‘check’ in
order to deviously keep people in the hand in the hope that someone
else will bet with an inferior hand. If his check was a bit suspect
(for instance, if he usually taps the table with his palm
but this
time he has just used two fingers)
then I would advise playing on with extreme caution.
Body posture often changes according to the strength of a
player’s hand. Small adjustments such as sitting up
straighter, squaring shoulders or the tilting of the chin upward
should set off some warning bells in the mind of the observant
player. A sign worth watching for is the way a player is breathing
– having a big hand and the prospect of winning (or losing) a
big pot never fails to raise your pulse rate. This in turn elicits
other physiological responses which we have no conscious control
over such as shallower faster breaths, nasal flaring, pulsating
veins in the temple or the neck (yes, really!) and the inevitable
shaking hands as the system receives a massive burst of adrenalin.
All the classic signs of anxiety and the ‘fight or
flight’ response. I was once almost unable to stand after
losing a massive pot (and consequently being knocked out of the
game) because my legs were trembling so much and I could scarcely
breathe. It seems illogical – it is after all just a game
– but it affects you in the same way that riding a
rollercoaster does. It is an addictive, rewarding, frustrating and
challenging game.
All that has been mentioned has been a general overview but has
hopefully served to illustrate that tuning in to unconscious
non-verbal communication as well as having a good understanding of
psychology, aids the poker player. Gambling (although I prefer to
think of poker more as ‘strategic investment’!) is all
about getting a small ‘edge’ (advantage) over the game.
Because it is impossible to see what your opponents have in their
hand, being able to glean any information that might help you in
your decision making when playing against them gives you the edge.
It doesn’t always work out that way and not every player
exhibits the classic mannerisms and behavioural patterns. But
without a doubt, the finest poker players of our time have
succeeded because they have been skilled in ‘playing the
player’, not the cards.