Body Language: 7 Poker Tells You Need to Know

It’s no secret that a big part of live poker is picking up our opponent’s body language or “tells”. In this context, a “tell” is an involuntary physical indicator that helps us to understand more about the cards our opponent may be holding.

Before we launch into our list of tells, it’s essential to understand the following:

Different tells can mean different things for different players.

In other words, most physical tells are not going to be reliable within themselves. We have to interpret them in the context of the player who is giving the tell. We first need to create a mental map of how our opponent acts by default and then look for deviations from this. It’s deviations from this default profile which provide us with information.