Quantifying the accuracy of tells

[SplawnDarts]

I believe most people who have read Caro's book of tells will agree that the "accuracy" figures for the tells are essentially meaningless except for purposes of comparison.

I can think of at least one reason why this is true: they fail to take into account background probability. If it's 99% likely that your opponent is strong based on previous action, and you get a tell that, with 80% raw accuracy, tells you he's strong, have you learned much of anything? Not really.

The purpose of this thread is to create a new system for quantifying tells & using them in decisions. It should have these properties:
0) Mathematically sound
1) Useful for computation about what play to make (& ideally simple enough to use at the table)
2) Addresses the issue of background probability
3) Boils down to a number (or a few numbers) that could be listed for each tell in a book like Caro's.
4) Addresses the other issues raised on the first 2 pages of chapter 2 in Caro's book.

I have some ideas I'll state later.

[mvdgaag]

This is impossible. Live play tells cannot ever be quantitized for a mathematical formula. You could use some statistics, but still then it would be very hard to use in a live game.
Experience will tell you how accurate tells are. Also tells differ a lot from person to person. For example, some people are nervous just about playing poker, while others never seem to have any of the tells associated with nervousness, so these tells tell you nothing except if you know your player.
Betting patterns on the other hand would be suitable for this, but they would differ too much from player to player as well. I think common sense and good judgement will do a lot better.

[SplawnDarts]

[ QUOTE ]
This is impossible. Live play tells cannot ever be quantitized for a mathematical formula.

[/ QUOTE ]

Why not? Your objection seems to be "they vary from person to person" but that doesn't mean that you can't quantify them. Just that you have to do it once per person. Which is essentially what Caro's trying to do by providing 3 numbers for varying qualities of players.

The question here is NOT how difficult it is to actually quantify tell behavior for a givn person, but what the correct mathematical structure is ie. if someone were going to hand you an accurate "tells sheet" on your opponent, how would you like the information formatted so you could make use of it.

[weknowhowtolive]

Reads and tells are part of the game that fits in "art" and not science. It is impossible to put tells into some mathematical formula and you would have no edge, and in fact, it would probably a negative effect on your game.

[SplawnDarts]

[ QUOTE ]
Reads and tells are part of the game that fits in "art" and not science. It is impossible to put tells into some mathematical formula and you would have no edge, and in fact, it would probably a negative effect on your game.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hardly.

The most difficult part of using tells correctly is integrating the information gained from them with other more conventional information in a sound manner.

For example, if you see an "80% accurate" tell that says X, and you believe X is going to be true in the background 99% of the time, do you now believe P(X) = 80%? 99%? 99.8%?

You can hardly claim that the difference between those numbers is irrelivant. So it's probably worth thinking about this after all.

[weknowhowtolive]

Where do you come up with the 80%

Where do you come up with ANY of those percentages?

On that same topic, when people say "I probably call 20% and raise 80%" do you actually think they are anywhere near that? Doubtful.

Reads are not math unless its a betting pattern. You can make up random percentages to try and make it LOOK mathematical...and by all means, if you make one, stick to it. Because when you start making read specific plays based on a mathematical equation, you are going to get run all over.

The second someone picks up on what you're doing, they now can impact your decisions by a "tell."

If its math, its exploitable in poker. If you are making folds based on math, and you play a single player who picks up on it, you're toast.


I see a lot of people on this forum who are hardcore into poker math and thats fine. But math isnt everything in poker and it never will be. Why do you think people say things like "a computer could never beat better players"? Because the computer would be making every decision based on math and patterns which the real live player could then exploit.

Nothing wrong with doing this, im sure its a good exercise, but its not realistic.

/rant

[bernie]

[ QUOTE ]
Reads and tells are part of the game that fits in "art" and not science. It is impossible to put tells into some mathematical formula and you would have no edge, and in fact, it would probably a negative effect on your game.

[/ QUOTE ]

It is an art, but it can be applied scientifically.

Actually, you can put it into a mathematical formula. The thing you're not doing is leaving room to adjust. You're saying that every time it will be the same %. People change so you change with them depending on your read.

If someone asked you how sure you thought he was bluffing, and you said 'pretty sure'. With some thought, you could put an actual % number to your read. It might be wrong, but you can still put a number to 'your' feeling of whether he's pulling a move or not. I mean, you know it's likely he's bluffing, so it's not 0%. There is a chance he does 'have it' so it's not 100%. 'Pretty sure' would probably be well over 50%, probably more like 70 or something.

With some thought, you can put a number to the likelihood. Then you could take that number and compare it to the pot size.

Now, no one really goes literally that in depth with it. Most will just go with their feel, and that's likely close enough. It's kind of like people who have a feel for the pot size(by sight) without knowing the literal size of the pot.

But if you really thought about it, you can put a % number for that situation as it's happening right then.

b

[David Sklansky]

The responses you are getting are karma for your cuffs posts. Want to reconsider?

[weknowhowtolive]

[ QUOTE ]
The responses you are getting are karma for your cuffs posts. Want to reconsider?

[/ QUOTE ]Do you think that the OPs idea is possible?

[*TT*]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The responses you are getting are karma for your cuffs posts. Want to reconsider?

[/ QUOTE ]Do you think that the OPs idea is possible?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes. Perhaps my answer is not as defined as the OP would like it to be, but in simplistic terms that even I can understand we already apply Bayes Therm in this manner.