my tells

[John49]

At Commerce Casion earlier tonight, a player could tell when I getting a JJ-AA or AK. I'm not sure what the tell was. I know I go really quiet when I get something good. How can I find out what this is and work on it? I do have one friend who is pretty good at poker. Maybe I can pay him to sit at a live table w/ me and tell me his opinion after a session.

[EMc]

Bingo.

[ActionDJ]

Tells are something you can change easily. If you are serious about the game, stop talking altogether. Less talk = less tells. Then find yourself a hand routine, anytime I am going to play a hand, I look at my cards, take 2-3 seconds (even though i always know what to do immediately) grab the exact amount of chips I want to use (never try and make change, huge tell), set it in without saying a word, and put on my sunglasses. For the big hands like JJ-AA you have to tell yourself that this is not as exciting as it really is. What I mean is that you have to remain calm, nervousness will be portrayed to others, especially in conversation, or laughing, or coughing, or twitching your arm/hand, scratching your head, and the pumping vein on your neck, which the player next to you may have been using to get the tell on you.
As for the garbage hands, I always toss those immediately, some people like to wait 2-3 seconds so that when they pick up a hand its not a tell. For me the tell for when I pick up a hand is when I raise, of course that hand could be 98s. I don't think its important to wait so long to fold.

[djoyce003]

were you maybe only raising with JJ-AA and AK? that might be a good starting point.

[John49]

Much of the time, I was only raising w/ JJ-AA, AK. I might've raised AJ and AQ in CO or button. After the first couple hours, I realized I needed to hide some and varied up play some.

ActionDJ. Thanks for the advice.

[Pokey]

My last time in Vegas I was highly intimidated at the $1/$2 NL tables. Keep in mind that I was playing $25NL online at the time, so sitting with the equivalent of 20+ buyins in front of me was scary. I noticed that players were ridiculously loose preflop, so I stopped raising with anything but true premium hands. At one point, I lost a huge hand against a player who had called my gigantic preflop raise with QJs and hit his flush against my AA. He commented "I knew you had something; you never raise without aces." After he said that, I realized my mistake, and stole the blinds from the button five times in a row. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

When playing at an incredibly loose table, the natural habit of a good player is to tighten up significantly on preflop raises; if attentive players are at the table, they will notice, and your raises will telegraph your hand. Be absolutely certain to mix in some non-premium hands for raises, especially from late position. I'd recommend raising all pocket pairs from EP in this situation -- it should partially disguise your play while costing you very little (those are easy hands to play OOP). Then, throw in a bunch of suited connectors from LP and you've got a preflop raising strategy that is markedly less obvious while still being powerfully tight.

I know it can feel gut-wrenchingly expensive to raise 22 to 8xBB from UTG, but realize that (a) it's an image play, (b) it's still roughly EV-neutral as a play, and (c) it makes those rockets oh-so-much-more-valuable....

[avfletch]

I'm sure you'll get lots of good answers here but wouldn't this be better in B&M?

[los_toros]

be chris ferguson ...

[RussianBear]

Other than this:
[ QUOTE ]
and put on my sunglasses.

[/ QUOTE ] this is pretty decent advice. If you're generally a chatty person, remain chatty when you get a playable hand, if you're normally a quiet person, stay that way when you're in a hand. Always pause before acting (actually use the time wisely, however, like to count outs, figure odds, replay the action in your mind to put opponent on a hand range, etc.). Make sure you body language and motions are the same, that is, always put the chips in the pot the same way every time. Also, when you pick up on someone else's tells (I'm not a big fan of tells, they are so rarely applicable, although that could just be the game that I play in) don't act immediately, pause. If you act right away, it is possible for the teller or other players to figure out what you've just discovered.

[John49]

Thanks. This is really good information for me to think about. I definitely will mix it up more and you have provided several starting points on how to do so when I'm not small stacked and already have a tight beginner image at the table to some.