Poker players are liars. Some are poor liars, so you have to hide your derisive smirk. Some are exceptional liars. But even people with stony faces are pretty expressive—at least to those who know them well.

While you may think you don’t have that kind of time, you do. Even the loosest poker players at the Texas Hold’em table see fewer than 50% of the flops. That means you’ll have plenty of time to carefully study the people around the table.

For a poker tell to be useful, you need to accomplish all three of the following steps:

Let’s look at the basic philosophy of how to study your poker opponent. If you need a refresher, be sure to check out our most common poker tells.

When I say “default settings,” I mean what each opponent does under normal circumstances. Otherwise, how are you ever going to identify out of the ordinary?

But tell are subjective. To spot and correctly interpret your opponent’s tells, you must first learn how to study opponents in poker.

Regardless of their reason for folding, they are now giving you a perfect opportunity to learn what they are like when they are not under pressure. Catalog these normal activities and actions. This will make it easier to recognize uncommon actions from that opponent when they are in hand.

Are they chatty? Even when they’re not engaged in a hand, are they eyeballing everyone else at the table—or do they play Candy Crush or watch whatever is on the televisions hanging from the walls and ceilings in most card rooms?

Use your own between-hands time to acquire valuable knowledge about each player, what they do under non-stressful conditions, and what they do while active in hand.

If you want to see how the top poker players deal with stress, look at our collection of the top players in the world facing off in the top H2H poker clashes of all time below.

When played at the highest levels—the big money tournaments at the international level—poker is a head game like no other. Some of the best heads-up poker showdowns haven’t been AA vs. KK, but rather, J6o vs. 83o—i.e., rags vs. rags....

Now that you know how to study poker opponents and their habits, it’s time to take a closer look at the player you know best: Yourself.

Have you considered your various emotions and physical sensations when you have a winning hand? Ten feet tall and covered with hair, aren’t you?

So now that you know how you feel, just how obvious is your joy? Are you smiling? Are you chatting?

Now you know two things about tells: You know you have them, and other people have them, too.

Incidentally, if this is the first time you’ve considered your own emotions and your perception of others, this might be a good time to check out some poker psychology.

Many tells are involuntary. Blushing is an excellent example of an involuntary tell. Trembling hands are also involuntary (usually, anyway). Even a twitch of the corner of the mouth is involuntary.

And the great thing about involuntary reactions is that humans have no way to stop them. So, how to scout opponents in poker and studying poker player tendencies should include cataloging your opponents’ involuntary acts.

But even controllable actions such as general body language can be a good source of information. Someone with a strong hand tends to be relaxed and confident—and such relaxed, confident people tend to make eye contact much more often than those under stress.

Some experts claim there are hundreds of physical tells, from covering the mouth during play to cracking their knuckles.

Is that smirk one of triumph or one of panic? Are those trembling hands a sign of a neurological disorder or a sign of pocket aces that match the two that just flopped?

If your opponent studies your chip stack before making a wager—or asks the dealer for a chip count of your stack—then it’s pretty likely your opponent is trying to intimidate you into either checking or folding.

Another classic tell (according to poker expert Mike Caro) is when a player reaches for his stack of chips a moment after you start collecting your chips to bet.

The player is anticipating matching your bet (or even raising it), and he is eager to join the battle.

Your interpretation of this anticipatory act should be that Mr. Impatient is hoping he can frighten you into checking or folding to his weak hand.

One of the more classic tells is the sudden all-in at the turn of the river. An all-in invariably announces that the player believes he has the nutz and is a dare to any who might disagree.

But why would a player make such a drastic move? If your opponent wanted you to put more money in the pot, he would have a three-bet. An all-in at this hand stage is likely an attempt to make you fold.

Consider how your opponent has played the hand up until he went all-in. If there’s something rotten in Denmark, consider calling the bluff.

There are dozens of very good books and hundreds of online articles about poker and its interpretation of the same. Guess what that means.

Okay, I’ll ruin the suspense and tell you what it means: Everybody out there has access to that information about tells and is even now using it to practice miming faux “tells” to confuse you.

That guy whose hands were shaking as he set his pocket cards down? Is that old age, nervousness, or wily deception at work?

A player with a weak hand may act relaxed and confident, making eye contact with all and sundry. Contrariwise, a player with a firm hand may tremble visibly.

Okay, you know how to study poker player habits. But online poker rooms don’t show us faces, body language, or even nervous chatter. But even online, tells exist.They mostly pertain to betting irregularities and to elapsed time, so pend time studying poker player habits in both the real world and online.

Speaking of which, you can practice recognizing online poker tells at the best US casino online. In the meantime, here are some apparent tells you’ll find online.

Most poker rooms online have an option where a player can get an auto check or fold a hand. This often indicates a weak player (although some clever opponents will use the feature to suggest they are weak).

It’s possible to raise and watch a cascade of insta-folds surrendering the pot to you.

This is almost always a strong hand, and it’s done because you’ve bet on the river, and now your opponent is daring you to match his all-in overbet.

Unless you are confident you have the absolute nutz, it is probably a good idea to write off your bet as the cost of playing poker and folding.

This player wants everyone to know that he is a poker pro and was only beaten because some donk chased a flush to the river and beat his set.

The one crucial bit of information to take away from this blog is that nobody wants to discourage you from wagering when they have the nutz.

That means that if they are taking an action that would make you think twice about betting, you are almost certainly facing a weak hand.

Trust me; your wins will be more numerous and your losses more manageable.

One last note – be sure to practice all your poker skills regularly. You can do this from the convenience of your home office or even your phone at one of our best online poker sites.

J.W. Paine is one of the most experienced writers at GamblingSites.com. He's written for television and the printed media, and is a published novelist (as Tom Elliott).

Paine loves writing about Las Vegas nearly as much he loves living here. An experienced gambler, he's especially familiar with thoroughbred horseracing, poker, blackjack, and slots.

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