Keeping a Poker Face

[Toonces]

Are there any tips or tricks you guys use so as to not give away your hand in yor reaction? I would like to remove any kind of tells that I have when I get my card, but I feel like sometimes, my body does not want to cooperate. I also have the same problems lying to someone's face, but I suppose my fiancee appreciates that.

[KidPokerX]

try your best to think "what does my opponent see in me? what am I showing to my opponent?" Then work your new "manufactured" look to your imagination.

[Kaz The Original]

If you cannot remove your tells, try doing many things, in order to disguise your real tells. Shout out for random cards on the turn (but only the turn!), practice going wide eyed before folding, stare directly at the table, nonchalantly say "OK, I guess I call" (which is a tell for strength) when you're on a draw / have the nuts / top pair top kicker.

Camoflague.

[Pov]

Experience may be all that you need. The first X times you hit your inside straight in a big pot your heart may be pounding through your chest with excitement, but eventually it will just become a brief "cool" and you'll calmly make your play. As your decisions and their likely consequences become more second nature, you're more likely to be able to control your excitement/disappointment and cut down your tells.

Besides that, I think you could consciously develop specific ways of doing each thing you do at the table and always doing them exactly the same way. If you always just sit still then say "bet" and place your chips in the same spot in front of you then you are less likely to have tells in "how" you bet, etc. You'll just have to focus and practice always betting this way regardless of bluff, feeler or value bet until you always do it the same way. Then work on raising or calling etc. until you are in full control. Then you can choose to put the variations back in, but only on purpose and for a specific reason.

How a player puts chips in the pot is the biggest location for tells I've found followed by watching faces instead of the board when the flop is turned over so those are the two areas I suggest you pay the most attention to.

[SenecaJim]

Try and avoid the tell I saw last night. Flop came 8 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]8 [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]2 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] and this old guy about 70 goes " Hot Damn!" He had pocket 8's.

[Toonces]

LOL...I wonder if I oughta train a camcorder on me during my home game. Could be interesting.

[tek]

[ QUOTE ]
LOL...I wonder if I oughta train a camcorder on me during my home game. Could be interesting.

[/ QUOTE ]

That would be a good idea. When I used to bowl in tournaments, I would video tape my practice sessions. It's amazing how I thought I was doing things versus what the camera showed...

[mostsmooth]

just try the sunglasses!!!!

[Bill C]

[ QUOTE ]
Try and avoid the tell I saw last night. Flop came 8 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]8 [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]2 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] and this old guy about 70 goes " Hot Damn!" He had pocket 8's.

[/ QUOTE ]

Try this: Look at your cards, and yel, "Hot damn!" Reach for your chips, but stop in mid reach. Look at your cards again, and then mustering up as much disgust as you can, say that you misread your cards and muck them.

Nobody'll bother looking at you for a long time. [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

I saw a thing about Gus Hanson on TV recently. He makes all kinds of faces, goes through contortions mutters to himself, saying things like "if he has THIS... or maybe he has that..." The effect is nobody has any idea what he might have.

bill

[Victor]

elbows on the table.

stare blankly into that space in the table just after your cards but between the pot.

elysium wrote about it long ago. someone could dig it up.

oh yea.....wear grey too.