In poker, these little ticks are known as "poker tells", and now you may be wondering why you've never noticed anyone you know performing these ticks. It's as simple as this ; a little poker tick can be as minute as dilated pupils, or as obvious as crossing their arms. This article will go indepth about less known poker tells that just might win you a hand or two.
Generally, professional poker players wear sunglasses at all times near the poker table, which really can make this knowledge hit or miss. So while knowledge of eye signals may be useless on the professional level, it is both interesting to know and useful at the amateur level.
A theory that almost every poker player in the world knows; wear sunglasses. The reason why, however is a little less known. The dominant reason being that when the Human mind sees something of interest (I.E, a flush on the flop), the pupils will dilate up to 4X their size. In a dimly lit room this will be impossible to detect since the lack of light will dilate the pupils anyway. Stay tuned, however, if your opponent isn't wearing sunglasses, you might be able to catch them with their pupils dilated. Which gives a clear signal- stay out of that hand. Bottom line, wear sunglasses. Statistically, professional poker players who wear sunglasses have better winning percentages than those that do not.
Many times a player will hold eye contact for longer than usual. This will worry the average opponent, but a lot of the time, they couldn't tell you why it made them nervous--just that it did. In general, trained liars will do the opposite of what's expected and hold eye contact longer and look away less. The average male will detect this type of lie only 15% of the time. To adapt this to poker, a trained liar may attempt to bluff and hold eye contact subconsciously. If they're holding for longer than usual, it will say one of two things, they're attracted to you, or lying about something. If you're playing poker with all guys, it's probably not the first of the two, but never rule anything out. If someone is having a staring contest with you, there's two things you should worry about ; losing the contest, and your opponent's bluff.
The average male blinks six to eight times a minute, holding each blink for about 1/10 a second. This, however is in a relaxed state of mind. People under pressure will tend to blink more rapidly and hold each blink for a longer time frame. What this means to you as a poker player? It means, if you see the guy across from you raising on a straight draw and rapidly blinking, he either has something stuck in his eye or is trying to bluff you out. This is especially useful to know if you're playing heads up with someone, as it is easier to focus on one person as opposed to an eight person table. Pay attention to their blinking frequency--the higher it gets, the higher the chance of them lying gets.
Always remember, these signals can happen within a twentieth of a second, but can reveal exactly how the player is feeling--whether or not they are aware of it. If you're debating to call a bet and notice the other player pull a quick little tick, chances are they're revealing something about their hand. Always weigh the ticks, because as said earlier, the player could simply have something trapped in his/her contacts. These tricks are useful to know, but not by any means the end all be all when it comes to deciding whether to call or not.
