It’s the ability to read your opponent’s body language and bets that’s key to playing well, although – as with all skills – there can be nuance and context that stand in the way.
Verbal cues aside, facial expressions and hand movements can provide us with a huge amount of information relating to confidence at the table. If an opponent is holding their chips in such a way that would make anyone shaky – well, perhaps they are shaky! If their posture suggests that they are ready to give up – call the match! If their body language is less confrontational than usual – go in for the kill!
Eye movements
These ‘tells’ – a invisible signal of the opponent’s hand value, strategy or intentions – tend to be nearly infallible when derived from a body movement. An opponent with a winning hand might repeatedly glance at his or her pile of chips, or look away momentarily when thinking of how to play a strong card; bombarded with warnings about their situation, the other player will ultimately be unable to resist the decision tree in his head from leading to disaster. On the other hand, a player in a losing position will often look uncomfortable or nervous when attempting to fish cards from the deck or pick one up. Other physical tells include the way the player moves his hands and the way he bets (consistent small bets might indicate a weakness; any change in the speed of play or a hesitation before a bet could indicate he’s bluffing).
Body language
Online poker tells don’t help much. Even in live play, where we’d expect them to contain more information, a change in posture can reflect annoyance or fatigue just as much as intention. So our note-taking here is somewhat misleading. Reasonable conjecture requires opening up a pathway from the appearance of a gesture to an intention or cognitive process. The meaning is thus embedded in the movement, and its virtues reside in being read with greater or lesser reliability depending on context. If you take too long to check your flop after calling a raise, then maybe you have a bad hand. But all the same, while a certain amount of scanning for unconscious physical tells is useful, one can cut oneself off from important information if it is overdone. Studying betting patterns and playing styles more reliably than one’s competitors is a more productive and reliable way to edge them out.
Facial expressions
You can tell how good a player’s hand is by their facial expressions. Their lips, cheeks and eyebrows might give them away when bluffing. Of course, not every tell is a reliable one – it could be just an accident – but learning to read people and recognise these tells could be pay dirt at the felt. Especially while playing online poker, keep track of your opponents and their betting habits to aid your decision-making process, for example a long flop check time indicates that they have poor hands which should be played tight. Overestimating the significance of unconscious tells is common among many novice poker players. Concentrating on behavioural clusters and broad categories – such as looking at chips might denote strength; covering mouth when talking is possible bluff attempt – is instead assistive.
Breathing
Breathing is a good indicator, as are reactions – someone nervous might be breathing shakily, shallowly. This might mean that they’re about to call their opponent’s bet, or that their hand is weak and they’re thinking about bluffing. Deep, measured breathing might mean that they are going to come over the top, big, or that they have a good hand. You might also be able to discern whether they do or not by observing how they grip their fists, or touch their cheek. Having tested ways of being attentive to these transfers in the preclinical phase of the project, the Life of Breath team tried out different techniques for paying attention to the spills and flows embodied in poker-players’ nonverbal tells. Working across the disciplines (humanities researchers, social scientists and clinical scientists), and also with some ‘breathless people’, collectively we discovered whole new sets of questions to ask and ways to answer them. Life of Breath would not have been possible without funding from Wellcome Trust grant 103339/Z/13/Z. The Durham University Department of Anthropology Ethics Committee provided ethical approval.