Betting psychology

With the growing popularity of online poker games, its sometimes easy to forget that understanding the psychological aspects of non-verbal communication can be a huge advantage to poker players. If you can actually see your opponents, its possible to infer what kind of hand they may have by looking at the way they hold their cards, gaze at the chips or even the way they touch their face!

Last year, an Oxford University psychologist, Dr Peter Collett, published The Book of Tells, which details the psychology of tells. A tell is basically a body movement that reveals what a person is thinking. Dr Collett deliberately lifted the core topic of his book from the nonverbal world of poker players. He has also spent time studying politicians, and has highlighted their tells, such as the way President George W Bush bites the inside of his cheek when he is nervous or anxious, and former President Bill Clintons tendency to bite his lower lip as a way of demonstrating his sincerity. Most of these behaviors are intended to be hidden, but are what psychologists call emotional leakage. Many psychologists have researched nonverbal communication. However, as soon as a non-verbal rule of thumb is well known, its hard to use the discovery to your advantage. For instance, if most people know its common to scratch your nose or look to the left when lying, they will obviously avoid such actions when being questioned.

When it comes to poker, skilful players will have the upper hand if they can learn to read the non-verbal cues of their opponents. However, most tells differ from person to person. One player might scratch his nose when he is bluffing, while another might hold his wrists, for instance. The key is to try to memorize the way the player acts at certain points to watch for patterns, if you will such as what they do when they raise, or the behavior they display just before folding (demonstrating weakness).

If a naïve player has been dealt a bad hand, he is likely to show discomfort through nervous reactions, such as unconscious finger-tapping

Unconscious tells are linked to negative emotions such as anxiety. If a naïve player has been dealt a bad hand, he is likely to show discomfort through nervous reactions such as unconscious leg- or finger-tapping. Serious poker players know about tells and will usually have learned to develop a poker face' to bluff opponents.

This is all part of the psychological battle in playing most card games. There are also what have been described as transition tells, where people display common but repetitive behavioral patterns in times of uncertainty. With so much TV footage of politicians available, psychologists have a much easier time analyzing their unconscious, everyday tells. Playing cards with someone youve only met a few times where there is no opportunity to replay the event over and over is clearly much more of a challenge. However, some poker players do appear to have the ability to read other players well, and its this ability that can separate great poker players from very good ones.

Players can also learn to employ false tells as a way of bluffing. The most common that Dr Collett describes is the power tell, which is often used by political leaders in actions such as the way they walk. Look at how President Bush walks the next time you see him on TV. His arms swing and swagger. His shoulder movement is quite exaggerated. He is trying to show the public he is the leader of the western world and what a powerful position he is in. Whatever your political persuasion, most successful leaders demonstrate confidence, even a degree of swagger. At the table, poker players also try to assert control and dominance by using more subtle power tells smoking a cigar in a particular way, or showing off when shuffl ing the cards before dealing, for example. The whole point of power tells is to look sincere and dominant. In essence, power tells are about oneupmanship, which is the bedrock of poker and most other skill-based card games. Even the language of power tells is lifted from the gambling world. In everyday human behavior, Dr Collett describes power tells as actions that raise the stakes and allow people to metaphorically or symbolically put their cards on the table. While power tells are usually conscious and deliberate, most nonverbal human behavior is totally unconscious and the vast majority of people cant help but show their inner thinking through silent actions such as folding their arms. Non-verbal communication is a fascinating area of psychological study. Human behavior is complex and there are too many individual differences to predict what any given person will do in a given situation (such as when playing poker). However, by learning to understand what all these unconscious movements mean, we can start to open a window on the gamblers soul