How do you interpret this tell? (long)

[GiantBuddha]

Tiger, you idiot, people who don't want a call tend to shut up, because they don't want to induce a call by accidentally saying the wrong thing!

Seriously, though, talking during a hand is one of the funniest tells. People tend to talk when they want a call, but it actually works. Maybe that's why people do it. It piques the opponent's curiosity. And curiosity killed the tiger.

[Scientize]

"The flop was 10-7-3 rainbow. A pretty good flop for me. Blinds were 200/400 and my stack before the hand was ~6K. Pot has 3200 in it. I bet out 2000. POW/MIA started out the hand with 5300 chips, so he's pot-committed if he decides to play. He pushes all-in. I contemplate a call and then he says:

"Any pair beats me right now...maybe" suggesting he has OESD. I've read Caro and I know weak means strong and strong means weak, but this guy also probably knows I've read Caro based on the earlier fake tell. Is he fake-telling back at me?"

The biggest thing I took from your description was that he waited for you to contemplate a call. If you have something to think about he wants you in the pot. He knows he wouldn't be able to talk you out of the pot with a better hand than he has, and if you fold right there that is fine with him too because he doesn't have a sure thing.

"It's like less than 3k for you to call in a 10k pot with middle pair, and you're gonna have less than 10bbs left if you fold. Unless he flipped his cards over I don't know how you can be thinking about doing anything but calling."


Regardless of the pot odds, you can't really think that your hand is good. What hands could he have that you can beat? Even with OESD he has 2 overcards to your middle pair, improving his draws. You came in thru an unraised big blind, so why would he reraise you with something that you could beat knowing how committed you were? Once he sees that it's not an instacall he can't go wrong by talking because he has you beat in a sizable pot which he is happy to win right there even if he scares you off. Folding and being short stacked is better than calling and being totally crippled because you called an all in with middle pair. For the same reason that this other poster thinks you have no choice but to call, POW knows you are pot committed in the same sense. A bluff with nothing is too risky for him here especially against an opponent that he has a known tell on.

He wouldn't have said a word if he thought you had a hand that had him outkicked. He took a shot because he had a read on your hand probably from your betting patterns in the big blind and strategy against what he was doing. You were thinking of raising with A7, but did you already show that you would raise with a stronger ace in the BB to get a player like him out? Otherwise he may fear you have K-10, but he put the pressure right back on you with a hand like that. Any trips, 2 pair you would have called right away, but why would you make such a big bet against a player like him with one of those hands? If you had a hand to trap him, you would have gone about it differently in his mind.

The fact that you were thinking of the reverse tell may have clouded your good judgement in the way you played the hand post flop. It's just such a rare thing, that common sense takes precedence over it. Players go all in with hands or strong outs especially against a player that is committed to the pot. It's significant that it crossed your mind, but if you are going to take the mental aspect to that many levels, just be sure you don't skip over simple things that put your tournament life at risk like that. You can't win the tournament at that point, but you can lose it. You have to be able to get away from marginal hands when you are very likely beat, and don't buy into the notion that you are pot committed in that situation. If you fold there, your stack can still do damage and double up especially with just blinds and no antes in play.

[mutiger91]

Thanks for the detailed analysis.

He did min-raise preflop, so my $2000 bet was about the size of the pot.

He didn't have much info on the hands I played. I had only played 3 hands at this table.

1) Short-stacked in BB, pushed all-in with a marginal ace when Button & SB called. Did not show
2) Next hand, raise & call in front of me. I push all-in w/ KK and get one caller, not the original raiser (K9..lol)
3) The hand described earlier w/ my pocket 7s against cowboy.

I think I may have seen a free flop from BB on another hand, but surrendered it when I didn't hit. He hasn't seen me do anything but move lots of chips as my whole stack ended up in the middle each time I decided to play. (This may seem counter to tournament thinking, but I was trying to be the guy nobody wanted to play against - without a monster hand anyway - and I was picking my spots to be pretty sure my opponent couldn't call.)

[mutiger91]

There is an epiloge to this story:

I took my winnings from last night's tournament and enrolled in the monthly $300 tournament this afternoon. (Never played this big of a buy-in before.) I met up with POW/MIA at the final table (lucky me). He is a helluva lot better player than I was giving him credit for at first impression. He was also on fire tonight and almost single-handedly crushed everyone at the final table. (I got one). I've never seen so many consecutive premium hands and it seemed like always at the right time. He made Jamie Gold look like he was running cold.

I got to play heads up with him, but he was more than a 4:1 chip lead by that time. (He had such a huge chip lead when FT started that I decided my goal was second, because I didn't want to tangle with him until I had to. I am the only one who survived reraising him - and I did it twice, which put me in really good position to finish 2nd. He folded both times, so I must have earned some respect.) By the end he was just brutalizing me w/ reraises and all-ins, so I pushed at him w/ suited connectors hoping to get a stack big enough to slow him down a little. Didn't work, game over, but over 2 days I turned a $70 buy-in to $3700, so I'm not complaining. Wish I could do that in the stock market :-)

[centaurmyth]

take the $3700 and roll it into an oex straddle. buckle up for the ride...

[mutiger91]

What's an oex straddle? Just got back from celebrating. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]