Quantifying the accuracy of tells

[hoyasaxa]

Okay, here's why you can't turn a tell into math

You raise to 200 in a 25/50 game with a pair of queens. The BB reraises you all in for 700 more. You pick up a tell he has that indicates strength.

What does that tell you? It depends on how your opponent thinks. Does he consider AK to be strong? What about pocket jacks?

Theres so much intuition involved in the deciphering of tells, based on how your opponents are playing, stack size, pot size, etc., that I dont think you can boil it down to an exact science.

[*TT*]

[ QUOTE ]
Okay, here's why you can't turn a tell into math

[/ QUOTE ]

You might want to read Jerod's new book, Mathematics of Poker. I'm not going to lie, I had a tough time with it and had to put it down before getting a mathematics refresher course but it might help you understand why there is some validity to the concept.

[CurryLover]

I think many responders have missed the point of OP's post/idea. The idea of a mathematical framework for analysing and using tells is not ridiculous nor (necessarily) impractical as some of the responses have suggested. When responders say things like 'tells are art not maths', or 'it's all about instinct', or 'how can you know a tell is 80% accurate?' - they have not quite grasped what (I think) OP is trying to get at.

Instead of responding aggressively to doubters, why doesn't Splawndarts post some of the ideas he promised in his OP? Then the discussion might move on somewhat. Splawndarts - Yes, they have probably misunderstood what you have suggested. Yes, you might understand poker theory better than some of them. But no, you shouldn't be using that sort of tone. If nothing else it comes across as very arrogant.

It's a pity, because I have read quite a few of your posts in the last month or two and have been impressed by quite a bit of what you have to say. But your tone has been a bit unfortunate in quite a few of these other posts too. You are clearly an intelligent, thinking player who has plenty to contribute to these forums. But I think you need to sort your attitude out a little bit.

On a related note, don't you feel a bit 'uncomfortable' posting things like:
[ QUOTE ]
The purpose of this thread is to create a new system for quantifying tells & using them in decisions...

[/ QUOTE ]
It all sounds like a rather grand scheme, worthy of investigation by a top poker theorist. I wasn't aware that you were one yourself - maybe I am wrong!

Also, hasn't this sort of thing already been at least outlined in the Mathematics of Poker?

All this is meant in nicest possible way of course...

[indianaV8]

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

That's anyhow an issue, no matter if you are using math or not?

> If its math, its exploitable in poker.
Rather the opposite?
You may have a look to some introduction (just google it) to game theory (optimal and exploitive play) -- I would recommend Mathematics of Poker - if one plays optimal strategy it cannot be exploited. Tells will basically contribute to know where your opponent does not play optimal, so you can actually exploit him. Well, these things are already pretty complex without the additional complexity of quantifying tells ;-) but that doesn't make them exploitable or wrong or not applicable.

> But math isnt everything in poker and it never will be
Here I agree :-) I also play sometimes poker for fun

> Why do you think people say things like "a computer
> could never beat better players"?

Who told you that? The only statement I know of is that while this is alrady true for chess it's not YET the case for poker. But NEVER is not the case.

> Because the computer would be making every decision based
> on math and patterns which the real live player could
> then exploit

It's actually the opposite ;-)

Have fun

[indianaV8]

For the B&M games that's a fair conlusion.

For online games

1) Tells are not many and pretty basic, quantifying them may make more sense, in a way of having some additional correlations (e.g. time to act, or use of advance action buttons) that you can use for potential exploitive strategy.

2) You also have it in your book, you can hardly collect enough stats on your opponens to get statistically useful results, and for online tells you need more tools (than the standard hand history). While your general statement is correct, I think in many cases stats on opponents helps not so much for a specific opponent, but rather to find properties of the whole players field, and this can be useful for a default exploitive strategy when you don't know your opponents.

So, for me although there is no huge potential in this topic, for me I found some food for thoughts.

[weknowhowtolive]

[ QUOTE ]
For the B&M games that's a fair conlusion.

For online games

1) Tells are not many and pretty basic, quantifying them may make more sense, in a way of having some additional correlations (e.g. time to act, or use of advance action buttons) that you can use for potential exploitive strategy.

2) You also have it in your book, you can hardly collect enough stats on your opponens to get statistically useful results, and for online tells you need more tools (than the standard hand history). While your general statement is correct, I think in many cases stats on opponents helps not so much for a specific opponent, but rather to find properties of the whole players field, and this can be useful for a default exploitive strategy when you don't know your opponents.

So, for me although there is no huge potential in this topic, for me I found some food for thoughts.

[/ QUOTE ]All an online tell is is a betting pattern. Nothing more. Tells tend to be physical or attitude/voice changes, not a betting pattern....usually they are seperated.

[mvdgaag]

First of all I've made and saved a lot of money (well, for me, lets say a lot of blinds [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] ) on physical tells like blink rate, chip placement, attention, patience (or the lack of it), talkativeness, and so on. They are worth a lot and I think most internet players underestimate this.

As I stated before they can probably be recognised by some smart software and from statistics the accuracy can be determined if it's combined with betting patterns, etc. I think this is very possible, only hard to implement on a live table and easy to exploit by people that know the software, because it will be near impossible to create something that will adapt quickly enough to fake tells. I'd buy one of these machines and learn to make it say the opposite [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]. A human operated system (with charts or memorized formulas and data, whatever) might help a player that is already good at detecting and using tells be a very little bit better. Not worth it imo.

Oh, about online tells... I think there are two (inacurate) real tells online that are not betting patterns:
1 the time someone takes for an action
2 the chatbox

[*TT*]

[ QUOTE ]
It's a pity, because I have read quite a few of your posts in the last month or two and have been impressed by quite a bit of what you have to say. But your tone has been a bit unfortunate in quite a few of these other posts too. You are clearly an intelligent, thinking player who has plenty to contribute to these forums. But I think you need to sort your attitude out a little bit.

[/ QUOTE ]

I disagree. This topic was valid, but some of us believe that Splawn Darts is someone who is too intelligent for his own good, who intentionally produces incorrect data hidden ever so slightly in his posts so he can revel in his genius as he argues with others - think Comic Book Man on the Simpsons. In short the wording of his posts seem to be intentional, he knows what he is doing, and if it continues I suspect a IP level perm-ban will be in the cards for him in the future. Fortunately the guy is obviously smart, I hope this experience helps him wake up and smell the coffee.

[El_Hombre_Grande]

Most of the posters here who have strongly disagreed with the original poster are probably doing a less formal analysis that is very similiar to OP's so called "mathematical" method. If I understand his point, he's saying that the best way to use a tell is to attach a % accuracy to it, and then incorporate that in you hand analysis, and range anaylsis.

Say we pick up a great tell, we notice the chatterbox in seat 5 shuts up and gets serious each and every time he is dealt a whopper hand.

He goes dead silent. He then raises, which should help confirm the accuracy of your tell.. It get folded around to non-math guy, who mucks his a little drawy but poor blind, thinking, "He's got a whopper hand."

OP analysis is just more deliberate, like so: Its 90% likely that the tell is accurate; if it is, his hand range is AA, KK, QQ, or JJ, in equal shares, all against which I have insufficient odds/equity without other callers, so I muck.

I think its just a logical way to keep your thoughts focused, and integrate a physical tell to standard hand analysis.

[Phil153]

Your idea is sound, but like everything, the devil is in the details. The only way to approach this is by writing out a large number of situations and going through the math of likely scenarios in each one. There are simply too many variables and hidden assumption for a more general system to be viable. There also needs to be debate about the reliability of various tells.

So, who's going to start the hard work? I don't play live much but it'd be interesting to see this written out.