I Realized One of My Tells
In which the author realizes he's giving information away.
Poker rooms are often palaces of silence.
If you go into any poker room, most of the time, all you’ll hear is a Pandora playlist playing in the background and the relentless shuffling of chips. There are many good reasons not to talk while you’re playing poker. While it requires other players, poker is fundamentally a solitary activity. There’s no teamwork involved and any communication you have with other players is often intended to manipulate them; your sole objective is to get everyone else’s money.
Players also don’t talk because they don’t want to give away “tells,” or some kind of verbal/physical signal that reveals the strength of your hand. Everything in poker can be accomplished without speaking. You place chips in the middle to bet. You tap the table to check. You collect the chips when you win. No verbal interaction is required.
I’m not saying I haven’t been at a poker table that’s sociable, but I am saying that I’m frequently the most talkative person at the table because I’m there to learn about the culture of poker and fascinated by the personalities that I meet.
Most people at the poker room aren’t like me, though.
One poker vlogger I enjoy is Gary Blackwood. His play is solid but he also has an amazing upbeat attitude that he somehow manages to maintain despite going through some pretty heavy downswings during a given play session.
In a recent video (I couldn’t find the exact one — his most recent upload is above), Gary mentioned that he identified a tell from an opponent: Whenever the opponent was bluffing, he would count out chips for his bet and then state the dollar amount in the form of a question.
“Wow, that’s a pretty obvious tell!” I remember saying to myself. “It’s ridiculous that that player wouldn’t know that about themselves. They’re just sending all kinds of information out there!”
I think you know what’s coming next in the story.
The other day in the poker room, I find myself in a situation where I had to bluff. I start counting out my chips and all of a sudden I hear the words leave my mouth as I push the chips in.
“$55?”
I shocked myself. I was literally doing the exact same thing as the guy in the video. I found it to be a fascinating experience from a psychological perspective. Maybe there’s something in the way that we bluff that can’t help but express uncertainty. Like, on a deep core level, I’m really saying to my opponent and to the world, “Here’s a dollar amount that I think is high enough to get you to fold? Hopefully?”
I won the hand but I learned that you can’t count on yourself not to give off tells, even if you are aware that they exist. Sometimes, diligent focus is required to counteract the information your body and your voice wants to give away.