As most of you know, I have been focusing most of my time playing live poker. Although I miss online poker, there is still plenty of live action and tournament series to keep us Americans busy. With the WSOP right around the corner, I thought I would talk about some of the live reads we can pick up and how to avoid leveling ourselves into bad decisions. I will finish up with an example where I did just that and leveled myself into a bad call.

Like in some of my other articles, I am focusing on the 90% of poker players who have not yet mastered poker, not the players already crushing the game. This article will cover some basic valuable knowledge, but is not meant to help a solid regular.

How many times have you been in a spot trying to make a decision when your opponent says or does something to make up your mind? I am sure most of you know the situations I am talking about, but let me give a couple of examples.

Some common tells players give off are usually just the simplest overreaction in the opposite direction, like when a weak player gets a great flop, sighs really big, and then leads out. Or when a player eating and paying little attention puts down their food to play a hand. Or when an aggressive player bets nearly the pot every time he is light and then bets half-pot. Or when you can tell a player is trying to look comfortable or trying to look upset, usually just trying to feed us the opposite reaction.

The key in most of these examples is to simply pay attention. It’s amazing how many tells and reads we can pick up just by paying attention. I know most players today have a smartphone, iPad, or an iPod and listen to music, browse Twitter and Facebook, and play somewhat distracted at times. I think most of us do this at least some.

But, I do think there are some key times we can pay attention. A few of these times are when the villains first look at their cards, right when the flop comes out, and during showdowns. You can also pick up some subtle things to help you understand the villain, like whether or not they memorize their cards or whether they always look back.

You can also look at how they stack their chips and if they stray away from using the bigger denominations, sometimes to the point of making a fold where they might call if they had more lower denomination chips. There are several subtle things we can pick up just by paying attention.

Now, I will explain a little more about a couple of these examples. The split second when a player looks at their cards or when they look at the flop come out is one of the best times to pick up tells. You can generally gauge their interest or disinterest fairly easily.

One thing I like to look for when they look at their hand is if they immediately try to look at the action. And when a villain watches a flop come out, I like to see if they look straight to their chips or straight to the action; both usually show some strength. It takes practice, but if you start paying more attention, I am sure you will see these things too.

Here is an example where I let a guy talk and then talk some more, making me think he was a little light. In the end, I was kind of right, but not right enough. I was on the button with K-10hh in a $130 nightly during the Oklahoma State Championship of Poker.

The hand started with the HJ+1 opening for 3.4x to 675 at 100/200. The HJ+1 was a 30-year-old urban-dressed guy drinking a mixed drink and talking a lot. I chose to call from the button and take a flop. The BB called as well. The flop was J-5-10 rainbow and the BB checked, HJ+1 checked, and I bet 1,200 into a pot of 2,125. The BB quickly folded and the HJ+1 started yapping about a bunch of random BS. He kept yapping for a bit and then shoved after about a good one-minute tank.

The shove surprised me some and I begin tanking to decide what to do, as I had a plan for him raising and calling, but was not expecting a check/shove. As I was thinking, he began to talk more and more, so I just listened. I was fairly certain he was not happy that I hadn’t folded yet and began to show some signs of distress.

After about two minutes, he called the clock on me and continued to talk. I finally decided that I was reading weakness and ended up calling. He had Q-J and held. I felt my read of his weakness was correct, as he was not happy with a Q kicker, but he was not as weak as I thought. I truly thought some draws and weaker 10s were in his range.

What I should have done is not tried to overplay second pair; there was no reason for a hero call at that stage of the MTT. Reads are great, but we must not level ourselves into calling in bad spots. Good luck to all of the grinders and remember to constantly be trying to improve.

This article was written by John cracker9ball Reynolds, who hails from Tulsa, Oklahoma. If you are interested in taking poker lessons or would like any information, contact him at variance101@gmail.com or visit Variance101.com.