Body language, in poker, refers to the way people act and look during certain game situations. Expert players become sensitive to these signs and very good at reading them. The term "tells" is used to refer to the various signals and mannerisms coming from a player that "give away" his position in the game, or his cards.
Tells exist in everyday life, too, and in fact are quite common. They are all around us, and we are all familiar with them. For instance, we all know that sheepish "caught with his hand in the cookie jar" look when we see it on someone. We all recognize the "resigned to my fate" look, or the "cat that ate the canary" look. We know the "It's not my fault" shrug, and the "I don't need this" look, and the "pretending to be nice, but actually inwardly angry" look. We've all seen the "child-looking-up-at-a-parent-and-asking-him-a-question" look and the "grandmother bending over and scolding a chiId" look - and so on.
These (and hundreds of others like them) are tells that take place among the general population on a daily basis. We are all experts at reading them. Thus, while one might imagine that an expert poker player would have a great leg up in such matters, this is not really the case. Skill at reading body language in everyday life is fairly universal. Moreover, the majority of these everyday tells are of little importance.
There are two reasons for this:
- First, the tells that exist among the general public are usually quite benign and harmless. There is simply no great secret to be revealed by them. (In fact, it's somewhat surprising how little of importance they do tell us).
- Secondly, these everyday gestures take place in a free and easy manner because there is no pressure on them. Put great pressure of some kind on them, and you would undoubtedly see a great change. Put any of these people (above) on national television, at a podium in front of a large audience, or in a high-stakes poker game, and these same gestures would likely become stilted and wooden. It is one of the challenges of the poker player to keep his own gestures free and easy as the pressure mounts and escalates up the scales of stress.
Concerning body language, the experienced poker player carries several mental lists around in his head:
- the way players act when they have a certain hand;
- the way they act when they are trying to disguise having these same hands;
- the ways they look when they don't have them or just missed them or are pretending to have them.
The experienced player looks for differences in behavior and eventually begins to categorize them. He becomes hard to fool, too, because these various checklists that he carries in his head are founded on a big backlog of experience that he has been collecting and cataloguing for years.
Strictly speaking, of course, they are not "lists" that he has in his head. They are more like a general awareness assembled out of thousands of occurrences - seeing certain expressions occur over and over until a pattern develops. For instance, he might recognize any of the following:
- The "just missed his hand and is annoyed by the fact" look.
- The "missed his draw but trying to disguise having missed it" look. (Trying not to have a reaction is itself a reaction).
- The "has no hand at all but is betting strongly in the attempt to disguise this fact" look.
- The "just trying to hang on by his fingernails and get halt the pot" look.
- The "Oh great, I'm tied with another player and now I'm being quartered" look.
- The "I can't believe I just got drawn out on again" look. The "I think you missed your draw" look - followed by a bet. The "I hope he doesn't raise" look.
- The stubborn "I refuse to fold even though I know I'm beat" look.
