Recently a video of Daniel Negreanu was posted on YouTube. In the video Daniel said that he was going to share his top ten poker tells.

A poker “tell” is something that a player does that gives away some information about the hand that he is holding. Daniel Negreanu has won 4 World Series of Poker Bracelets, 2 World Poker Tour Titles, and has amassed over $13 million in tournament winnings. So coming from Daniel these are tips to be taken seriously. Especially since reading other players is supposed to be Daniel’s specialty. Daniel started with the number 5 poker tell. This was that if right after the flop, the opposing player, glances back at his chips, this means that he likes the flop. The number 4 poker tell was that if you catch the opposing player reaching for his chips, out of the corner of your eye, that he probably intends to either call or raise. The number 3 tip was that if a player fully extends his arm and splashes his chips into the pot when making a bet, he is probably very weak and is bluffing. The number 2 tip that Daniel offered was that if, in the middle of a hand, the opponent starts to “jabber’ or answer a simple question with a nonsense answer, that he is probably very nervous and probably bluffing. When it came to tell the number 1 tip Daniel said he wasn’t going to give that one away and that you would have to learn that one by yourself.

Daniel Negreanu is one of the top poker professionals in the business today. He is very personable and a Team PokerStars Pro. In fact Daniel has played on all six seasons of “High Stakes Poker” and is presently the star of PokerStars TV show “Million Dollar Challenge”. Now although these tips are valid and were presented in a very entertaining fashion in this YouTube video, they are not new or revolutionary. Many poker professionals talk about tells in their books and many of them have recounted these tells in one form or another. Most poker movies deal with a particular tell. We all remember that in the movie “Rounders” the Russian had a tell with his Oreo Cookies that was exploited at the end of the movie. Probably one of the best books ever on poker tells was by the “Mad Genius” Mike Caro. Caro wrote a book that was exclusively about poker tells that was called “Caro’s book of Poker Tells”. The pictures in the book are quite dated so don’t let that put you off because it is one great book. If you play poker and haven’t read Caro’s book, then you certainly should. The book lists 58 tells, has a chapter on the sounds of tells, and includes Caro’s 10 Laws of Tells. My favorite of Caro’s 10 laws of tells is “When in doubt, sit behind the money”.