To the fledgling poker player, the game can seem like an endless series of battles “where ignorant armies clash by night,” meaning that poker consists of people being dealt cards, then exchanging money depending on the strength of relative superiority of the hands each was dealt.

But eventually, the fledgling player acquires more experience, and as Sun Tsu’s advises “appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak” becomes a guiding mantra.

And then, of course, the player begins to look outward and determine who else at the table might be trying to appear weak when they are strong.

Good poker players understand that they must eradicate tells from their own actions just as assiduously as they study their opponents for those same tells. Incidentally, you can conveniently practice some of the skills you’ll learn here at the best live online casinos.

Back already? Okay, let’s find out what are some common poker tells and why it’s essential to know them well.

If you’re in the dark, even the tiniest bit, about tells, don’t worry. Our blog about how to spot a fish in poker provides some quality information. It may not set you for going head-s-up against Phil Helmuth, but it will certainly open your eyes to what other players are looking for when they fancy seafood.

Back to the definition of a tell. In its simplest form, a tell is any unconscious action someone makes that indicates they are lying. Tells don’t change when people sit down at the poker table. But they all revolve around the gameplay.

Nobody cares about who the player was with last night or how young they were when they lost their virginity. All the lying taking place inevitably concerns their poker hands and the relative strength or weakness of the same versus the other hands at the table.

Learning to recognize and interpret various tells is a sure sign that a poker player is upping their game, working ever closer to the level of skill that separates recreational players from the pros.

Dilated pupils might be a tell that someone is lying—or it might mean they are in love with you, or they just came inside after being outside on a sunny day. In terms of tells, always look for corroborating evidence, like any good detective.

One last thing – you’ll notice that the meaning of a tell is often changed—even reversed—by the circumstances under which it appears.

For example, looking at one’s chips before your turn in the betting round can mean something entirely different if you look at your chips immediately after you’ve acted in the round. Experience will help you understand the difference.

And of course, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Next up on our common poker tells list is all about the eyes. It may seem trite or obvious, but the eyes are indeed the windows to the soul.

Humans express every emotion with their eyes. While the rest of the body can offer supporting evidence of what the eyes are saying, very rarely does body language disagree with what the eyes are saying.

The pupils of a liar often dilate (grow larger). Since this is an involuntary action, it may account for the preponderance of sunglasses around most poker tables.

Or maybe they’re all vampires. Who’s to know?

Other folk wisdom says that people trying to remember something will look to the left while doing so, while people who are lying about something will look to the right.

That could be true, but since everyone seems to have heard about the looking left/right tell, plenty of liars stare at you directly and at length to avoid giving themselves away.

Unfortunately, liars who use the direct eye contact ruse don’t blink their eyes regularly—and that’s a much harder habit to imitate.

Not only are the eyes themselves useful indicators of mental state, but what they choose to look at can also be a significant indicator of hand strength or weakness.

If they look ever-so-briefly at your chip stack after the turn card is dealt, they’ve almost certainly just told you they made their hand with the turn card and are even now counting how much of your money they are going to win.

When watching for tells, be sure to spend a good amount of time cataloging the body language of your opponents. Have you noticed their fingers trembling as they pick up their cards or set them back down?

Do they play hunched over most of the time but occasionally sit ramrod straight, all attention on the game?

Sure, sudden attention and activity might be one of the most common tells in poker, but it’s also the one most easily misinterpreted.

Sure, it’s probably the first option, but look for other evidence before folding your pocket aces.

Generally speaking, catalog what all of your opponents are doing most of the time so that you will recognize something that seems out of character for that player when the time comes.

We all have plenty of distractions in our daily lives, but at the poker table, we set aside those distractions and turn our attention to our cards, chips, and opponents.

At least, initially. The more comfortable we become at the poker table, however, the more likely we will allow our natural habits to resume. This might mean scrolling through Twitter or watching the game on the nearest TV monitor.

Good players know this and take those first few moments during the deal to evaluate each opponent’s level of attentiveness to the game after they have looked at their cards.

Incidentally, while it’s not a tell, per se, catching someone else surreptitiously checking out the other players (including you) as the cards are dealt can indicate the presence of a better-than-average poker player and one worth paying particular attention to.

It would be considered an obvious tell in poker except that it is not a bluff or a deception.

If you started out in poker at a young age, chances are your father, uncle, aunt, or big brother taught you to check your cards once and only once.

Checking one’s cards a second time is one of the more popular poker tells simply because it’s easy to spot.

But it requires some finesse to properly translate because it can indicate either a strong or a weak hand, and the proper divination of its which is found in the circumstances in which it is performed.

However, a player checking their pocket cards immediately after wagering in turn usually indicates the player has a strong hand.

If you’ve watched any WSOP or WPT poker tournaments on television, you’re already aware that there are quite a few poker-chip gymnasts out there. These people can shuffle a stack of chips one-handed, which is interesting to watch, at least for a few seconds.

Having learned long ago to roll a quarter across my knuckles, I can only admire the dedication and time these players have devoted to acquiring such a useless skill.

But yeah, it does look cool, doesn’t it?

In any case, I’m not talking about the pros who shuffle their chips constantly. Chances are, they’re shuffling is just a distraction to keep you from catching other tells them may be manifesting.

Random and infrequent fidgeting with one’s chips, however, is a sure way to indicate a heightened stress level. The trick to understanding whether this is a tell is showing nervousness is being aware of when it started.

If the player has been shuffling chips one-handed for the past three hours, then shuffling chips will not be a sign of anything—and you need to look at other actions the shuffler may be taking.

On the other hand, suddenly rifling through one’s chips or restacking them can be a sign of stress—and stress means weakness.

While a poker table in a brick and mortar casino room will see around 25 hands per hour, some poker players at the best online poker sites will see roughly three times that many hands in the same 60 minutes.

Moreover, online play allows for multiple table play; some devotees manage as many as eight tables simultaneously.

So, speed of action in terms of how quickly a player acts, in turn, can mean many things.

Those few seconds of deliberation may dwindle to a second or even less—rendering the delay undetectable—if that opponent is playing poker at eight online tables.

Of course, the rookie also tells of checking, folding, calling, or raising out of turn.

A call or raise out of turn usually indicates a strong hand. A check or raise out of turn could mean many things, and because of that, the move should be studied carefully and understood as fully as possible before you take and responding action.

Keep an eye on the players who call quickly.

Common tells in poker involve chatty Cathy’s. Some people begin to chat aimlessly immediately after telling a lie, hoping to distract others from the lie. The key to interpreting the chatter is often its timing and frequency.

People typically taciturn at the poker table may start telling ribald stories after glancing at their new hole cards. This may not indicate anything, but it almost certainly does not mean a weak hand.

If somebody chatters away whenever they’re in the big blind, that could be a sign of relief that they are last to at during the pre-flop betting.

Perhaps they have a killer hand, and other active players should expect an all-in when it comes time for the BB to check or exercise the option.

Overall, poker tables tend to be quiet places, so any chatter or conversation should be monitored for stress levels and frequency.

 This is the intentional bullying of an opponent to get them to take a particular action—usually to fold or to raise. In either situation, it is almost invariably a sign of a strong hand and should be reacted to only after great deliberation.

You won’t see this all that often in cash games, mainly because the grinders don’t need it, and the newbies don’t know about it.

You’ll find it even less frequently online simply because players don’t have the time to type out grammatically correct challenges and taunts while managing hands at six to eight tables.

The key to using poker tells effectively is two-fold. The first key is to eliminate tells from your own arsenal of actions. This can be difficult since many common poker tells are instinctual or even involuntary acts (pupil dilation or failing to blink).

Work on the tells you may have until you’ve eliminated them or found a way to mask them that isn’t a tell in and of itself (pinching the bridge of your nose to hide your dilated eyes, for example).

Come on—you were already thinking of doing that yourself, weren’t you?

The second key is to start watching all the other players at the table instead of watching television, playing Angry Birds, or texting your significant other. Watch them each in turn as the initial cards are dealt.

Do they look at their cards immediately, or are they staring back at you with a knowing twinkle in their eye?

Also, check out good poker habits to form for an overall tune-up of your playing strategy below. Above all, keep notes—as much as possible—after each poker session or during a break in the play. Don’t groan like that—nobody likes to take notes, but this isn’t something useless, like tensor calculus or Euclidean geometry. This is poker!

The number of good and bad habits associated with poker are legion, with good and bad mixed in relatively equal measure. In fact, every good poker habit is the natural obverse of a bad poker habit. For example, keeping a poker face throughout your play is a...

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