[mxp2004]

I don't think that this is a tells issue. When you play a tight aggressive game and the only hands that you showdown are winners, players assume that you have the goods when you're in a pot. This can enable you to pick up a lot of small pots where your preflop aggression and post-flop continuation betting end the hands quickly. The flip-side of this is that it makes it harder for you to get paid off with your big hands because no one sticks around to play with you long enough for the big bets to go in.

I don't know what the answer is, and I'm interested in hearing other posters' suggestions. Maybe the answer is to play a more LAG-style game than a TAG-style game. In any event, I don't think your problem is tells. IMHO, the vast majority of low-stakes NL players (and I'm assuming that is the kind of game you're talking about) aren't perceptive enough to identify a tell correctly or skilled enough to use it effectively.