Poker Tells to Make You Fold
When we play poker, we like to call. I mean, you don’t come to a game just to fold all night, right? Where’s the fun in that? There’s nothing wrong with wanting to actually play a few hands, but the problem arrives when we look for tells that make us call. The tells that show weak poker hands are fewer and far less reliable than tells that show strong ones. If you go looking for a reason to call a player’s raise, you may be looking at a short game.
When you look for tells, it’s a lot more productive to look for signs that a player is holding a strong hand. A shrug, a sigh, or any other sign that a player is raising against his better judgment is a good sign that he’s got a hand that will beat yours. It’s harder to quantify what your gaining from reading tells that make you fold because there aren’t any poker chips to stack, but keep in mind that the money that you’ve saved by not calling into a losing pot is still money that you’ve earned. It’s tempting to look for that magic sign that screams “I’m bluffing! Take my chips!” but you’ll save a lot more money by finding that sign that says “I’m going to beat you with this hand!”
