The Pulsating Vein Tell

[David Sklansky]

In an earlier post I asked whether it was cheating if you could see another player's cards or if you took advantage of the fact that the vein in his temple pulsated when he had a good hand. I was surprised by the fact that everyone put the second scenario under the category of picking up a tell.

His pulsating vein is NOT a tell by the normal definition of "tell". Because it is not something he is aware of or something that he can change. If you take advantage of it you are beating him based on something very similar to beating him due to the fact that his hands shake and you can see his cards because he can't protect them very well. If you want to argue that it is OK to take advantage of this kind of thing fine. But don't tell me that this falls under the category of routine tell detection.