How A Poker Pro 'Reads' His Opponents

you another hint. It's a subject that I really like and I'm interested in, and you always sort of claim that you know nothing about it and are not interested in it. Uh, it's totally not a claim, Joe, and I think I know where you're heading with this. It's the objective truth. I know nothing about the subject, and if we were to engage in this particular subject together,

that would become rapidly apparent. Okay, Well, we're going to do another episode about the game of poker, which I really like, which a lot of people in markets and finance like to do in their spare time. And the reason is obviously because a lot of the things that go on in trading and a lot of the decisions that people have to make are similar to decisions that people have to make in poker because there is the

sort of calculable aspect to it. There is math involved, but there's also a lot of psychology involved and things that you just cannot brute force compute, and that's of course what makes markets so interesting. We've obviously hit this subject from many ways in the past. One thing that we haven't really talked about is something that a lot of people think is a very important aspect of poker,

which is tells. And that is your city across from someone at the other side of the table and they do something weird like maybe they run their hand through their hair, or they pick their nose or just whatever it is weird, or they put on their sunglasses and a big hand. You know, I'm just saying like different, different sort of impulses that people have. The people at the table try to read, right, Uh so this is something I mean, you have to be living under a

rock not to know about this one. But yeah, there are tells and you're supposed to be able to read them, and that's going to help you in figuring out what the other person's hand is and then maybe even if you have a terrible hand, you can still beat them using human psychology. I know this, yes, and I think there's like I think in the movie Rounders, which is

about poker, there's some major stuff tells. Anyway, So today we are going to be talking with a guest whose specialty is exactly this reading poker tells and how you can sort of watch someone and look at someone and learn something about maybe what they're holding or their psychology from their physical actions, and much in the same way that other aspects of poker may have applications to other things in the world, like investing and other sorts of

making decisions that involve risk. So too to poker tells. So, without further ado on a brigand Zachary Ellwood. He is the author of multiple books on the subject of poker tells. Zach, thank you very much for joining us. Hey, thank you, guys, I appreciate it. Zach. What is your background and what

is a tell? How would you define a tell? Well, I would say I have a more formal definition my book, but off the cuff, I would say it's a behavior that gives information about something someone's hand in poker, obviously, but outside of poker, you could, you know, just get his information about anything that they're concealing. Why are you qualified to tell us about poker tells. Sure, that's a good question. Yeah. So basically, I played for a living

full time for about three and a half years. This was, you know, two thousand, forty two dozen seven time period, and since then i've played, you know, on the side supplementally. Uh. And before that, I grew up playing poker, and I've

always had an interest in it. During the poker boom, you know years which were when everyone was playing poker, which was about two thousand three two thousand eight or so, somewhere in there, I was playing a lot of poker, playing, playing for a living and and supplementally, and I was always wondering why there wasn't a better poker book, poker tells book, And there were some books out there, but I didn't think they were that good. So that's what

led me to, you know, being inspired to it. Wasn't that I thought I was some super genius at the subject. It was more more like I thought I could do a better job than what was out there currently. Well, so I know you say that you don't consider yourself a super genius by any means, but when it comes to telling tells As a poker player, how how can you tell that you're good at recognizing tells versus just good at playing poker, Like, what are the two different skills? There?

One thing I tell people I always try to communicate up front is that tells are a small part of winning live poker. You know, because you can be a very good player and never think about tells. You can be a very you know, highly winning player and never think about tells. So there's kind of a romantic idea that tells are super important in the game of poker. And I always like to make it clear to people that, you know, because experienced players know that, you know, strategy

is is the biggest part of the game. Uh. Tells are sort of like the icing on the cake, something you do to get get a little bit more edge on people, and they can be really important, you know, some people, I'd estimated after talking to a lot of experienced players too over the years. I think, you know, being good at reading tells can add you know, anywhere from one to to your win rate, just depending on

how good you are strategically. They begin with and just how good you are at reading tells, So there's a wide range but most experienced players would say the range is somewhere in that area of boosting your edge, right, like in movies about poker, which is probably where people

got this romantic notion about tells. There's obviously an over emphasis on their importance because I don't know, it doesn't seem very cinematic to depict someone who's genuinely good at poker and folds forty hands in a row and sort of waits until the implied pod odds are making so they should bet, which is not as fun, not as fun, but it's much sexier to say that someone always does the same shifted their seats when they have a big

hand or what they're bluffing. Yeah, the requirements of cinema kind of it's it's interesting that how the requirements of cinematic drama, you know, affect society and people's expectations, you know. But yeah, it's uh, it's definitely much sexier side, which is one of the reasons I think, you know, writing about this stuff. There's a lot of people that have written about poker strategy, you know, very good players, and it's kind of hard for them to get much attention

for their books. But writing about poker tells, uh, you know, makes people listen a lot more like it's more mainstream. In other words, So since you're talking about movies, I'm curious, Like in the movies, there's always you know, it's like a really important hand and then the opponent does something and the player is like a ha, I know that he's lying or bluffing or whatever, and it's really dramatic. So when it comes to tells, is there a hierarchy

of tells? Is like a verbal tell more important or more informative than a physical tell. There's definitely a range of reliability just in general, depending on certain behaviors. I mean, there's some behaviors that I would rank is highly reliable. I would that I would rely on in a vacuum without knowing anything about a player, just because they are

so generally reliable. And then there's other tells that you want to be you would want to observe a player more and see what category of behavior they're falling into you generally, and then you know, there's a lot of tells that are just you know, obviously not all tells, or there's lots of tells that might make you like, sure, it's one way or another. But that can be very important if you're in a big you know, a big like on the fence scenario where you could go either

way between calling or folding. You know, So even a little bit of information if you think, oh, this makes it slightly more likely this guy is doing this, that can be valuable too. But and also verbal. When you mentioned verbal, I wrote a whole book on verbal poker tails called verbal Poker Hotels, and spent eight months full time working on that and actually learned a lot doing it too. Because I initially thought, oh, I won't have much to learn here. I kind of know what I

want to write. But the more I spent researching and watching videos and taking notes when I played, I had a lot more to say than I thought, and I ended up concluding my My final takeaway was that verbal poke tails when they're when they're present, when there's something interesting there. When someone speaks during a hand, it's it's much more reliable than physical poke taels. Just because they're

people are less. They don't know the patterns as much. Basically, they're not as well known when it comes to verbal patterns, so people are are looser when it comes to their talk So the first time I ever played poker actually in a casino, I didn't know how I was going to act, and I caught myself when I was bluffing. I had no problems, sort of like keeping my composure and just acting very relaxed. But when I had like a winning hand or a big hand, I noticed looking

at my hands that I would shake more. And I didn't know that. I didn't expect that would happen, but it was something about myself that I noticed. So talk to us about the sort of general framework. How do you how do you start Let's say you sit down at a table in a tournament or a cash game in a casino. You've never seen any of the players before, so you don't have any sort of preconceived reads on them. How do you start to collect in your mind a

database of tells and uh put that to your advantage quickly. Yeah, well that's a pretty big that's a pretty big question started from scratch. But I'll give a few things that I like to tell people as far as like the most important things to look for. I'd say I contact an eye movement in general when people are making large beat is one of the most important behaviors to watch for. Basically, when somebody makes a big bet, where where are they looking?

How loose are their eye movements when they look you know, say they look from their opponent back, you know, a few times or something. In general, like the more restrained his stoic behavior will be tied to um, you know, weak hands bluffs, whereas like the more relaxed behavior will show itself as loose movements, loose eye movements basically like more more dynamic, and that is restrained. So that's one

aspect of eye movement. And then the other one is whether someone's looking at you or not looking at their opponent or not after you know, when they're making a big bet, and that can go either way, but in general it's something you want to watch and see how it's showed up before, and if you do get a pattern of someone how they're acting over time, that can

be super valuable. And in general, looking at an opponent after betting is going to be slightly more tied to strength than weakness, just because most people are more comfortable when they're betting a big hand, so they're more likely to engage interact with an opponent, you know, with with their eyes, including and most people, you know, when they're bluffing,

want to avoid that they're uncomfortable. They just want to sit there and not interact with anyone, right, So those kind of things come out, and yeah, there's a lot of variety there and a lot of that you want

to keep. You know, some people will be very stoic and consistent, so it's it's more like you want to see when people's One of the one of the magive things to watch for in general, just in general foretells is where where people are behavior varying their behavior, because if someone's not varying their behavior in different spots, you know, it's pretty unlikely you're going to find a find to read. But the first thing to look for is when people

act differently in different spots. So seeing someone behave you know, just seeing them alter their behavior a good amount in different spots, you know, in the same situations over time, will give you an idea that you should be looking at that person. So that's why in general, yeah, you'll you'll be wanting to first study the people that seem to have more varie d and less consistency in their behavior.

You know, that's a that's just a general clue. So on that note, Zach, is the best way to obscure your own tells to basically try to be as consistent as possible in in your behavior and just make sure that you're sort of reacting the same way every time. Or or is it could you be super eccentric and try to obscure it that way? Like which way should you go? Yeah, it's a good question. I mean you

can go either way. Really, you can be stoic to be consistent, or you can be highly variant and and you know, eccentric as you say, and as long as there's no correlations, no one's going to give anything from you. Um. Yeah, I think the safer route is, you know, being stoic, and that's what more people would you know, most most people are going to have a hard time pulling off

the highly variant behavior. It's definitely possible, and I have you know, there's plenty of examples of people who are good at talking and moving around and being loose, you know, without giving any in a way. I mean, one of one of the big things that just is just knowing the common ways that information can leak, you know, with

your physical or oral behavior. So if you're aware of those ways, you can definitely, you know, play with the rules a little bit and and move around and talk and not give anything away because you know the common ways that you know, information might leak. And I think what people get into trouble with is when they they try to be fancy with their behavior or super loose and they think that they're not giving any way, but they're just not aware of some of the more common

ways that that can can happen, you know. So I think, you know, for example, some people try to do fancy reverse psychology and trick trick and opponent, but those kind of things can actually become that person's tells because they're just not aware of how common that kind of reverse psychology attempt is, you know. So they're they they're thinking they're doing a reverse tell, but they're actually just having to tell you know that that can happen a lot

for you know, the more inexperienced players. Yeah, I was gonna ask exactly about that, like this idea of reverse tells, because I have to imagine that as awareness of tells grows and people learn things like okay, if this guy puts on his sunglasses and shoves a bunch of chips into the middle of the table. It folds his arm and looks down. This is like sort of like maybe a classic bluff because he's trying to look super stoic

and badass. But then over time, if everybody sort of believes that that's what a bluff looks like, then theoretically people would change their behavior. So is there sort of like a there's your mental catalog of what sort of classes of tells look like, have to be sort of constantly updated, have to sort of anticipate how people might change.

Now that's that's kind of interesting thing about it. You would think that that might happen with experienced players who are, you know, operating on these multiple levels and trying to full people, But really, when it comes down to it, you don't see that much. And the the reason is because if you're trying to fool someone, say you have two good a good players playing each other, it's just really hard to predict how an opponent will interpret your behavior.

And so it helps to explain a lot of things I think outside of poker too, because theoretically there's all these levels of deception, but when you get down to it, it's it's just super hard to know how someone will interpret your behavior. And that means, you know, you would have to be very sure that they would interpret it in the way you want to interpret it. And and that's hard to know because they might see you do

something and just pull the opposite conclusion. They might you might be doing something on a second level of meaning, but they're taking the first level of meaning, you know, or you know, some an extra an extra level of meaning. So there's for that reason you just won't see many complex reverse towels. I see it very very infrequently, much less frequently than I would have thought, you know, a

few years ago. And I think it's just because you know, it's just for that reason that the main strategy is just to be stoic and then occasionally made you do some fairly simple reverse psychology. For example, one common one that I've seen strong players do, but you know, I think it's kind of died down a bit. As like that, it was well known that when someone someone bets and they call it the clock on their opponent, you know, basically forcing their opponent to act in a certain time.

When when the person whose bed has done that, typically it shows that they're relaxed, right, because normally someone who's bluffing wouldn't want to potentially anger their opponent by calling the clock on it. So then but then you had good players, you know, who recognize that, and they would sometimes call the clock on other good players because they knew that this other good player might would likely interpret

it as this guy being relaxed, you know. And good players also try to take make use of the more of the lesser known tells because they would be less likely to rely on super well known tell just because then it makes the other guy, I think, oh, that's a super well known one. He wouldn't be likely to

do this because he's pretty decent, you know. So there's these levels of you know, basically, the good players are going to try to rely more on the on reversing the lesser known tells that most people don't know because they think that will that's more likely to be interpreted in the way they want by another good player. So there's just all that you always have to take into account the skill level of your of your opponent, and that's why it's so complicated because you just don't know

how it's going to be interpreted. So is anyone capable of fully plugging all their leaks so they don't give out any tells, or do the really experienced good players do their tells just become more subtle. And I guess that's sort of also speaks to the sort of broader question of why do humans have tells? Why is it so that, even against our best efforts, typically something in our body or our speech betrays the truth that we're trying to or the lie that we're trying to present.

I think, in general, if you are experienced, if you've played a lot, I mean, if you know the common ways that information can leak, then I think you're gonna be pretty good at being unreadable, you know, and except in rare cases and unusual cases. But I think it's it's easier than most people think. And I think, you know, it just basically takes making a concerted effort at understanding

what is possible and then focusing on those spots. I mean, I do think there are you know, let's say, a very experienced live player who is you know, near unreadable. They still can have small tells. You know. For example, a lot of high stakes players like to wear scarfs or high collars. You know, to cover up their neck because the neck pulse can be even for experienced players

making a big bluff typically in a tournament. A tournament is usually where it's it's going to bring it out of people because those are much more higher stakes and a lot more on the line than a cash game, for example. So they'll where, you know, they'll where things that cover their neck pulse because uh, you know, you're more likely experienced players anywhere are more likely to have

a fast heartbeat when they're bluffing. Them when they're value betting, they're kind of you know, value betting in a in when they have a strong hand, it's kind of old hat to them. But even an experienced player can get their blood pumping in a in a big tournament spot where there's you know, theoretically a million million dollars on the line or something. So I have two questions off

the back of that. One is if you can wear a scarf and sunglasses while playing poker, could you come in and just wear like a ski mask and completely obscure your face? And then the other question is everything we're talking about is you know physical or verbal tells that you see when you're playing directly across from a person. How much of this is applicable if you're playing poker online? Oh yeah, So the first question about the ski mask, that's definitely a you know, a poker tournament or a

poker room specific question. I mean, I've seen videos of people covering up their faces, but I think most a lot of places wouldn't allow that. So yeah, it's definitely. Uh. I mean, when people do it, obviously it's it's mostly been a joke, but I'm sure there will come a day when somebody you know, wants to do that in a real situation for a lot of money, and then

they have to. Yeah, I think I think the I think the more popular places don't really allow that, the popular card rooms because you know, yeah, but it's a good question how much how much can you cover up if you can cover up part of your face, you know? M hmm. What about the applicability online? Right? Yeah, I'd say the only behaviors that are meaningful online that they give information or the immediate immediate actions basically fast bets, fast calls. Those are the bet timing or action timing

behaviors that I think contain the most meaning. I'm trying I don't think there's anything else I can think of a top of my head, unless it's like somebody chatting in the in the chat, I think so basically, And the most meaningful of that is the fast call. Basically, say you've got the flop, which is for non poker players, when the first three cards come out and you bet, you bet that flop and then somebody calls you really quick.

In general, quick calls early in the hand, they're gonna indicate medium strength to weak hands, basically because somebody with a strong hand is generally gonna at least consider raising you in that spot because they want to maximize value. So they're gonna even if they decide to call you, they're gonna give it a little bit of thought and be like should I call here or should I raise?

So those quick calls can be really meaningful for narrowing down a player's range to the weaker side of the range, and then that can encourage you to keep keep bluffing. For example, later in the hand. Let's talk a little bit about the psychology of tells as they apply outside of poker. So obviously people have this, you know, for whatever reason, an inability off to hide the truth, even when they're trying to obscure it. Sometimes it's as simple as a vein pulsing in their neck that signals a

faster heartbeat. What is the you know we're talking about earlier? A lot of the lessons of poker are applicable elsewhere. That's why we keep coming back to the subject. So in your research and in your work, what is the sort of abstractable lessons from reading poker tells that might be useful to people off the table? Yeah, I mean, I think it's it's tough one to answer, because I

think poker is such a unique space. I think it's more that the general behavioral you know, being good at being focused on people's behavior in general can make you good at reading people in general and poker or other places. But I think poker is so unique because it's even even amongst other competitive games. I would say getting good at poker tells will definitely help you with other competitive situations, whether it's other games, or whether it's negotiations or high

stakes business meetings or whatever. And I think there are some takeaways. And I've definitely had people tell me they read my books and got better as as lawyers and as doctors like understanding getting more empathetic with the how their how their patients were acting, which was really cool for me to hear, because you know, I didn't have high hopes said it would that kind of stuff translates

to other things. But I definitely think there's a lot of a lot of things that just makes more sense when you key into them at the poker table, like, for example, that the eye contact stuff. You know, you can you can get a lot of information about where people look and if they avoid contact with one person over time, you know, it can tell you that they don't like that person or whatever. You know, there's those kinds of little things that come up, signs of discomfort

and pauses and speech and things like that. Yeah, I think I think it applies to a lot of things, but I think it definitely applies to the more competitive situations. So Zach, on this note, you actually have your own podcast that that's sort of on this topic about how people in various professions sort of read other people. What's been the most interesting takeaway from that, Like, what's one

really interesting anecdote that you hadn't considered before. Yeah, there's a lot of I've had a lot of fun with that show. I really liked the interview I did with Mark mcclisch, who wrote a book called I Know You Are Lying, and it was about statement analysis, and he used to do training with the U. S. Marshals and

other law enforcement. He wrote books about analyzing written and verbal statements, and he was kind of partial influence and inspiration for me writing the Verbal Poker Tells book, you know, kind of taking that really focused idea of focusing on language and bringing it to the poker table. That was partially you know, I was inspired by him, so that I really am a fan of that one. But just recently I did an interview of an experienced restaurant industry

service industry worker. He's managed restaurants and everything and eat. It's just some really interesting psychological tips on how, you know, eight staff is trained to get better tips using certain

verbal patterns. You know, that's something I wouldn't have considered, you know, apparently that's like something they do in the in the restaurant chain business, you know, as a common you know, using these kind of like behind the scenes psychological strategies for putting people at ease and getting better tips and stuff like that. So yeah, that that was my concept for the podcast was just these interesting kind of hidden instances of psychology and manipulation, you know, Zack.

Before we go, I gotta ask, what's the weirdest poker tell You've ever seen? Because some of them were sort of obvious across your arms and looking down. What's something very uh strange that you've seen? Yeah, you know, I should have a better ready answer for that. But one that just came out recently was somebody somebody had the most tells I've ever seen in like a short period

of time. It was from this show Live at the Bike what they play on camera with hull Cards in California at the Bicycle Casino, and I wrote I wrote a piece about it for Poker News dot com. But and it was just it was just so many tells of strong hand basically in such a short period of time. Like it was basically like six different things I wrote about,

you know, and and called out. I can't think of a really crazy ones were yeah, think they were the They were the normal ones, like nothing, you know, nothing too crazy. It was like acting uncertain before making a decent size bed and like a little shrug behavior and uh, you know all these signs of basically that acting acting week when you're actually strong, you know, those kinds of things. So lots of cliches. Yeah, I kind of clicheates, But

I can't think of anything. I mean, I'm sure there's there's definitely, uh, some weird ones I've encountered, but nothing's screamed to mind. All right, Well, Zachary l Wood, Poker tell Experts really appreciate you coming on the podcast. Oh, thank you, guys, I appreciate it. It's my honor, Tracy,

I really enjoyed that episode. I love this idea that the demands of cinematic drama have sort of changed the way people view real life because obviously, again going back to how you would depict the game of poker, tells are probably the most interesting thing you could depict visually, even if the impact on the game in most games is pretty marginal. Right, It's kind of hard to visually depict someone thinking about whether they should draw another card

or not. Joe, I gotta ask, what's your biggest tell when you play? Do you know? Oh? I really I do have a problem with my handshaking. I'm like, and I have that always, like if I just like pick up a glass or anything, or am I an slightly uncomfortable position my people who knows my handshakes, But it definitely gets accelerated at the poker table, and I think it's typically when I have a winning hand. But now you know, if anyone hears that, you can't be sure

that I'm not trying to psych you out. Oh yeah, it might be a reverse tell, or it could be a reverse reverse tell. We'll never know. Remind me why poker overlaps with finance and markets so much. I know a lot of finance people are competitive and they like playing games for money, so sure they play poker, But what's the applicability of the things we learn from poker

to markets and investing. I think it really has to do with the fact that you can only It's a very open ended game and you can only have You could never calculate the odds perfectly. So there are other games of chance. There are other gambling games in which you know the odds going in. So, for example, if you were to play roulette, you know going in the odds that on any given spin it's either going to be black or red or a specific number, and you

could calculate them perfectly. It is impossible to do that in poker because obviously there's math involved, but you just cannot fully calculate how the humans are going to perform elsewhere on the table. And I think that's like that's the relevance to markets, Like we we know all the data, we're drowning in data, but you can't fully calculate how people are going to behave under periods of extreme stress,

under periods of tension and panics. You four is, there's only so much you can number crunch, and there's a certain element of human judgment reading the room, reading, the table, reading, and that's why people try to uh, you know, positioning and sentiment, all these measures to sort of get at the aspects of the market that people can't really fully calculate.

The humans are the wild card. Yeah, look, look I made a card pun Okay, great, very well, all right, Well we've done another episode on poker, so it's it's my turn next week and we're going to get back to capital flows and emerging markets. I think great. I can't wait. Okay, this has been an another episode of the Odd Thoughts podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on Twitter at Tracy Alloway and I'm Joe wise

It though. You can follow me on Twitter at the Stalwart, and you should follow our guest on Twitter, Zachary Lwood. His handle is a poker player. He's also the host of the People Who Read People podcasts. You should check that out. He discusses psychology and behavior at various activities, and you should follow our producers on Twitter to for for Foreheads He's at foreheads T as well as Laura Carlson.

She's at Laura M. Carlson and don't forget to follow the Bloomberg head of podcast, Francesca Leap at Francesco Today. Thanks for listening.