Look at How Your Opponents Handle Their Chips

You can get some nice clues from watching how your opponents handle their chips. You can get insight about what they hold on a particular hand, and you can learn how skilled they are in general.

Can They Riffle?
The most basic and straightforward test is to see their comfort level with chips. Someone who handles them expertly – riffling them, cutting them smoothly, rolling them around the fingers and thumb, the speed with which they gather and stack a pot they've just won – this can give you a good idea of the player's experience level. Now, the best chip riffler in the world might just happen to be an awful player, but it's fair to generalize that confident chip handlers have had a lot of table experience. On the flip side, the guy who clearly is ungainly or slow at chip handling is a real novice.

Against a novice: 1) Be more inclined to take their bets seriously, and 2) be less inclined to bluff them. And against a skilled player: 1) Be less inclined to take their bets seriously and 2) be more inclined to bluff them. That's about as general as it gets, and often that advice has to be discarded if you see a novice playing like a maniac or a skilled player who doesn't play many hands.

There's also an opportunity here for a false tell. If you are skilled at chip handling, you can pretend to be clumsy and uncoordinated with chips. The goal would be that you would induce more bluffs against you (because your opponents will be following the opposite of my advice on how to play a novice) and people will take your bets and raises more seriously. Personally I don't do this a lot. First of all it's a ruse you have to keep up for the entire session. You can't let your guard down and absentmindedly riffle your chips. Secondly you won't have many friends left at the table if you're “caught” or found out as a faker, and I always recommend having a “best friend” image at the table.

I might do it once – the first time I put money in the pot – I'll make it look clumsy like I don't know how to hold chips. Let people create a first impression of you. But then abandon the charade after that.

Putting In the Wrong Amount
Next: let's talk about the people who put too little in the pot or too much. Often, novices won't be 100% clear on the structure of the game. In a 3-6 game, they may try to put in $6 on the flop, or $3 on the turn by accident. Sometimes they'll try to do something even more foolish, like trying to raise themselves after they've opened the betting and the action has gone around the table.

I treat these gaffes as very sincere tells. Someone who wants to bet $6 on the flop is strong, and someone who tries to bet $3 on the turn is weak. You'd think these would be prime opportunities for false tells – but frankly I've never seen that happen. Someone who tries to raise themselves, or put in too much money – they typically have the goods.

String Raises
There are some very interesting things to observe with string raises. The first is that a string raise is hardly ever a bluff. The second is that the person who cries out “That's a string raise!” is almost always weak. So observe those two and act accordingly.

But the great thing is, there's a wonderful false-tell opportunity here, on both sides of the equation. I have never done it personally, but I am convinced it would work beautifully. The first false-tell play would be to deliberately string raise, knowing that you will be caught and forced to withdraw the second bet. What a sneaky way that would be to get a free card. Imagine – you're on a flush draw. You deliberately string raise the flop, and all your opponents check to you on the turn. You've paid one small bet to see two additional cards. Barry Greenstein (see his book: Ace on the River) would almost certainly consider this unethical, and maybe that's why I haven't tried it.

The other false tell, which couldn't possibly be considered unethical, is to be the guy who cries “String Raise!” at a moment when you are concealing enormous strength. Wow. That would work wonders. Think of it. You flop a monster and decide to slowplay to keep as many people in the hand as you can. Some novice player attempts a string raise. You play sheriff and point out the string raise. Now, not only do you keep others in the hand, but you earn solid gold credentials as someone with a weak hand. I am waiting for a chance to do this; but like so many specific false tells and deceptive tricks, the circumstances have to be just right, and the opportunity hasn't presented itself yet.

The Quick Call
Online players know this tell very well, but if someone calls your bet very quickly, it usually signifies weakness. It's a lame attempt by the caller to impress you with his determination to call you down. Often it means the caller is on a draw and is impatient to see the next card. As with the other tells, there is a good false tell opportunity here. When I flop a monster and I want to give the other guy a sense of security, I quick-call his bets to project a little weakness.

Stacking a Raise vs. Cutting the Chips
Here's a chip handling tell that's never let me down. It concerns how players handle their chips when they raise. Generally, in low limit hold'em, a raise is less likely to be a bluff than an ordinary bet. But observe the chips. Say it's a 4-8 game and your opponent makes a raise on the turn. If he gracefully puts out a single stack of sixteen chips OR if he puts out a clean stack of 20 and then removes the top four, he is NOT bluffing. This rule is ironclad.

However, if he slowly or painstakingly cuts out 16 chips in stacks of 4, then you have to consider the possibility that you're being bluffed. The slower and more dramatic of a presentation he makes it, the more suspicious you should be.

Frankly, I don't see a lot of semi-bluff turn raises or pure bluff raises in the low limit games I play. It's probably because people realize after only a little experience that these games are showdown poker. You lose your appetite for bluff raises once you understand that someone will always call you down with top pair. Nevertheless, there will always be people who give it a shot, and the carefully cut, painfully-long raise motion is the surest givaway.

We've only scratched the surface of chip handling tells today, but hopefully these pointers will pay some dividends for you.