Live tells: general ideas about how to exploit them in others and hide them for ourselves
Posted by MrSneeze
Posted by
MrSneeze
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Gen. Poker
Live tells: general ideas about how to exploit them in others and hide them for ourselves
Everything summed up in the title.
I have a little bit of experience playing live, but by no means am I a live fox. Would like to get there though, as I feel a lot of the edge in live game comes from there. This is especially true in live MTTs IMO.
I feel I'm pretty good at reading people live, considering my little experience (I'm 25). I'm less good at properly protecting myself from being read.
I'm usually pretty good at keeping my composure. First off, I've stopped constantly shuffling my chips ; realized it made me more nervous than anything, and after a few hours of play, it's actually pretty tiring for the mind. I have a way better live attitude when I just sit and relax, and also let myself get a bit more focus / excited sometimes.
One issue that I have though, is my heart beating. When I pull out a big bluff, well it's very hard to hide my veins pumping blood all over. The good thing is that I also get that when value betting, so in a way it's pretty balanced. But what end up happening, it seems, is that I just get called more often than not: in the end my live composure (+ my hippie/samurai face) makes me getting paid off A LOT. Which is good now that I understood it. Hard for me to bluff a lot though. To be even more exact, when I feel the spot is great for me to bluff, then it usually works. But sometimes I don't feel like it's going to work often (might still be a profitable bluff right, depending on sizing and all that), and there I have a very hard time controlling my cardio-vascular system.
What I recently thought of was to actually let go of the tension by doing exactly what my body is telling me. Reason is: in those moments, I feel my body wants to ease itself, for instance rubbing my neck, nose, or changing postures, you know, all the classical tells of tension. But I'm repressing those impulses because I don't 'want to get caugh'. So in the end, I don't move much, or the movements seem clumsy to me, and that is a very big tell for bluffers in my experience: little movement but heavy tension. Hence I thought, what about letting go of what is coming? If I want to scratch my nose, or even stand up and move my legs because I'm tensed, why not doing it? Why not tell my opponent the room is getting hot? That I cannot stand the tension he's putting me on (basically the truth)? Instead of resisting the tension, embracing it and accepting to show it, with as little conscious effort as possible. It seems that it could be the best way to express confidence, because I'm usually considered a strong player by others (would they know me or not), and showing obvious agitation is more likely to be considered a sign of strengh than staying static with my carotid artery pumping crazily. I'm pretty sure that letting me moving would release the tension and ease down my vascular tension ; or even if it doesn't, it will not look strange.
Reason I thought of that is because I've had some success influencing my (good) opponents to do what I wanted them to do, simply by changing postures (so in moments I'm not stressed out). I've definitely realized that good players give meaning to changes of posture, and you can use it to your advantage when 3betting light preflop or whatever.
It seems pretty easy to balance by just randomly moving when having a real hand. In those cases my veins are also pumping a fair bit. Basically, and to sum up, my idea was to use tension and movement as a camouflage, instead of trying to become a statue, because the statue poker face, although working well 80% of the time, still let me down sometimes. Next time I play live, I'll definitely try out to let myself be, just release the conscious control, since the tension emerges from the resistance I develop towards the subconscious impulses. I resist to those because I'm afraid to look weak, reveal that I'm bluffing, but having thought about it for a while made me realize that I'm likely to look stronger (because bluffers hide).
What is your take on that? Any opinion appreciated. This thread could also become a brainstorming one, where anybody can share some insight about live game, composure, self-control and self-management.
All of this seems pretty important to me, because being confident in your live composure generally makes you very good (you make good decisions because you're not wary of doing anything out of line if needed), and also very scary.
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Hey MrSneeze,
I'm struggling too to conceal emotions and tensions :)
I pretty convinced that it's very difficult, if not impossible, to control tells, even more so to balance them.
Your emotions show because you're in an intense emotional state.
A solution could be to quit that emotional state to enter another one.
You could do it because :
- you're confident you analyzed correctly the spot and made the best decision
- you're mentally indifferent to what villain does because you made the best decision taking into account Villains future actions
- you won't even tilt, accepting whatever actions Villain takes and for whatever good or bad reasons
- you're accustomed to variance and almost never tilt.
Another mind state you could choose would be one where you're completely confident and detached, thus unemotional.
In my case, I'm trying to remain in an abstract state of mind where I analyse the hand and, when my decision is made and while I'm awaiting Villain's play, I'm switching to a mental state where I deeply analyze the current spot or a variation of it, or even another one which I'm working on just like a HH I would see on a forum.
So I'm working intensely (ie concentrating) on counting combos in my range and that of Villlain's; I might also do the same exercise, but changing 1 street, or whatever is useful to make me think intensely, but emotionless.
While doing so, I can look at the whole table as well as Villain, but no tension shows off, because I'm not really "there", as I "quit" the spot, kind of forgetting it (the best way to forget something is to think about something else)
Entering that new state will put you naturally in a relaxed mode because it's something you do so frequently.
I had several occasions where Villain and the whole observing table was convinced I was huge because of my natural relaxed attitude and gave me too much credit.
HTH.
PS : cya soon at Wasop.
Very good advice all around. I must say: I'm good at not tilting. So that should give me confidence and detachment (it usually does, but sometimes not, still unsure why). I feel I have to be very clear on that: 75% of the time I'm not attached to what is going on and can express confidence even in a huge pot. What I want to work on are those rarer times where I freak out.
I like very much the idea of analyzing the hand as on a forum, counting combos and such, will definitely do it more now.
I remember this big 3 barrel bluff that I made against a russian pro at a 5/10 game ; after I bet big on the river I focused on an image of pocket aces on the table (logo of the casino or whatever), not thinking I had aces per se, but trying to have this feeling of looking at a strong hand. Just that made me pretty relaxed for the 4 to 6 minutes the guy stared at me contamplating his decision. I even surprised myself thinking the same way I would do if I had a nut hand: 'Pay me off, I have aces and you'll be owned!'. I got to this state where I was so convinced of having a good hand that I'm sure he almost felt the confidence spreading around me.
What's pretty interesting is that sometimes we get this good state of mind, and sometimes we can't manage to make it happen, or we lose it in the middle of a hand.
Good point also about having this routine of analyzing and going back previous streets: knowing what you will and should do, everytime, definitely eases the uncertainty, and therefore the tension.
PS: oh so you know me, do I know you? Definitely come and say hello at the WaSOP :).
yeah, I used that trick too : I could very well have Aces here; so I start to vividly visualize Aces and the pleasure of having a premium (lol). What that does, is it let your body express what you would feel if you really had them.
In fact, psychology (like NLP) has several ways to let you switch your mental state quickly; we should all be able to do it at will ;)
Another thing : thinking deeply about a subject is a kind of meditation, so thinking deeply about a HH or assessing GTO river ranges (or anything of high interest to you like a movie or a personal pleasant story that you recall in details) puts you in a meditative state even more so if you're trained to control your breathing and breathe peacefully (I forget that part regularly, lol).
I bet it happens to you everyday while thinking about poker and not noticing somebody talking to you or some event happening in the background.
PS : yeah, we played like 1 table apart (T12) last saturday (wasn't aware at the time though).
Meditation is something I've been doing reglarly for a couple of years, and I agree with you that training the breathing can help us remain peaceful and in control / acceptance. It's a very good tool not to be too attached to the game, the variations of our stack this kind of thing. As for when I play a hand, I still usually get more excited.
How excited do you get? Are there varying degrees of excitement? And is there perhaps a better word or words to describe what is going on internally and externally? The reason I ask is i wrote you a long reply (too long) with references to Movement Psychology, which very few folk know about, and it was a bit much to be honest. But i thought your original post was very interesting, with respect to what you said about your concern regarding giving off live tells.
I guess I'm freaking out when bluffing and realizing: 'oh it seems like a bad bluff to me, so how can this guy not notice that I bluff? If he doesn't notice it in my line, he'll see it in my face'. Basically vicious circle, starting from slight doubt. In the end, I'm boiling inside, and sometimes it is noticed.
One thing I've done to improve that is not to get involved in bluffs when I'm starting to doubt myself or the move. OR I'm taking more time to think, breath, relax, and then bluff. When I anticipate it usually goes ok.
In the end, what's troubling me is not the intensity of this type of 'agitation', nor the frequency (maybe it happens once every session, rest of the time I'm very satisfied with my composure), but rather the fact that I never know when it's going to pop up.
One problem might just be that I feel the agitation inside (I'm very self-observant, very much into psychology, listening to my subconscious a lot, my dreams, meditating), and from there assume that others do. But pretty sure that's not the case. Most likely they can't figure what I feel.
I recently played a live tournament at Foxwoods $300 30k guaranteed (only 5th live tournament) and i found that listening to music helped immensely. I'm 29 with a preppy frat boyish look (as per observers) and never have been a proponent of sunglasses, hoodies etc. (nothing wrong with that just not me style). Mediation, exercise, eating right is all great. (not too much caffeine). However, most importantly, playing stakes that you feel absolutely comfortable with is the best way to reduce this effect. Like i said for a tournament, this was the first time i listened to music and it not only gave me a different table image, but helped my mind detach in bluff spots. I think it's great you stopped shuffling chips as i recently have done the same and sit with my hands crossed touching each elbow almost in a meditative position. I feel that live tells can be overrated in certain spots..meaning that your perceived table image comes into play more than an isolated instance of your opponent thinking your bluffing or not.
your perceived table image comes into play more than an isolated
instance of your opponent thinking your bluffing or not. '
Agree with that!
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