How do you reduce the shaking tells?

[varoadstter]

I have this tell, too. I have been playing live for about a year and a half. It has cost me some action. Unfortunately, I am jittery by nature so when I do get the shakes people can see it from the far end of the table.

What has "worked" for me is to make sure my hands are in contact with the table as much as possible. I don't shake if I'm steadying myself on the rail or the felt. I have to remember to do that on every hand, though. I'm sure someone observant can still pretty much see it.

Good luck.

Interesting stuff...

Now, let's say that you've got the shaking under control, but you suffer from that incredibly increased pulse when you have a monster.

I was playing in a small home tourney last night. I was dealt wired aces and my pulse just spiked unexpectedly. It never really happened to be before. I flipped the collars of my shirt up to cover any vein action in the neck. I may have been over exagerating, but it was intense blood flow.

Any advice for this, or does the existing advice apply here as well?

do you play with the same people all the time? once i get to know someone's playing style i normally lose this tell. i think about how to make the most money against this person, rather than "oh boy i flopped a monster, im going to win!" its easy to win with a monster, but with a cool head, you can maximize your earnings if you know the other players' tendencies.

the other night in my home game i was getting terrible cards all night, then i won 2 big hands in a row and felt like i had just done 10 lines of coke, i was so excited. i just got up and stretched, talked about how happy i was to finally get a coupld of playable hands and then nobody even cared anymore. i won about 3 more big pots before the night was over (within an hour or so of this).

like everyone has already said, this tell will get better over time. i used to telegraph pocket aces preflop before the action even got to me, my tells were so bad, but now i can flop a set and slowplay it with the best of em, unless theres like crazy action. then i get a little excited lol.

but yeah, play a lot of hands and practice controlling yourself a little more mentally and this tell will fade if not completely disappear.

also, i think playing online will make this tell worse, especially if your home game doesn't meet very often. im a college student and this summer i played live about 4 times and online the rest of the time. When i came back i was just so excited to be playing that i would constantly get nervous and shaky with even my mediocre hands.

as for the pulse, deep breaths and concentration are the best way to attempt to lower it yourself. i would also recommend sitting out a few hands to get a drink or use the bathroom to calm yourself down if you feel your pulse getting out of control.

Anyway good luck, home games are fun. If I were you I'd worry about having fun first, then making money. When I win a big pot, I'm usually just exhilarated that I won, not happy to win the money. My main reward is knowing that I just kicked someone's ass, and when outplaying someone rather than winning money is my motivation, it greatly reduces my tells.

Steve

[ThinkQuick]

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do you play with the same people all the time? once i get to know someone's playing style i normally lose this tell. i think about how to make the most money against this person, rather than "oh boy i flopped a monster, im going to win!" its easy to win with a monster, but with a cool head, you can maximize your earnings if you know the other players' tendencies.


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I get this cool calculating thing going whether I know the person or not. It's always interesting to extract money.

One thing that may help you is to concentrate on losing your tell though. If you can become aware of it (which you obviously weren't in that hand) then you may be able to control it. The other thing I think that may help is to know damn well what you're going to do. An extremely good flop may still get you shaking, but if you are just following your plan when the turn makes (or misses) your boat/flush then you won't look like you're too excited to know what to do with yourself (because you DO know what to do with yourself).