The most common emotion that people try to project is sadness, or disappointment. The truth of the matter is, whether you’re willing to admit it, or not. All people like sympathy, and a free pass; and that’s no different at the poker table. People know that they’re being watched, and they know that what is being watched for is emotion and expression. (You always have to remember that most of the time you are dealing with somebody whose perception of emotion and expression is engrained in them by movies and television, and therefore exaggerated.)
Because of this, that’s what they’re thinking YOU are looking for, and people tend to animate (or now that you know better, over animate) themselves in a way that tries to lure you into putting your money in, when they know they’re ahead.
Sadness is one of a few unique emotions that has no universal tells. Sadness in every human being is different. So when you see it, how do you tell if its genuine? Well its real simple. All you have to do is ask yourself, how ridiculous does this person look right now?
If the answer is, everyone looks like that when they’re sad then they’re probably faking it. They may be very slightly irritated, or a bit unhappy, but they are not vulnerable! The reason for this is, when a person becomes overwhelmed with sadness, their conscious view of themselves is at its weakest point. That leads to the inability to control the facial muscles, and allows them to move freely and at random (random to the person, not necessarily the situation.)
Its natural for somebody’s brain to tell the body in this situation to try to attract as much comfort as they can, from anywhere they can. While on the other hand, somebody faking it is going to show the movie expressions. You may see eyebrows raise without being drawn together, wrinkling the forehead, accompanied with enlarged puppy dog eyes. You may see the mouth curl down making a sad face, and what I’ve found to be a solid giveaway is, when somebody is projecting this and sees another person looking, they’ll look down, or purposefully break eye contact. THESE kind of people are trying to draw as much sympathy as possible, but without attracting a lot of attention by projecting what they’ve seen as socially acceptable sad behavior (aka movie sad).
This happens by default, because their perception of themselves is active trying to put together the perfect combination of expressions, and they don’t want to project one that will make them look foolish. (It’s a human ego thing, nobody looks bad on purpose.) The bottom line is, nobody is going to be in a hand if they’re legitimately sad. If a person can’t control the muscles in their face when they’re sad, they sure as hell aren’t going to be able to play poker.
Shame on the other hand, is a little different. You WILL see this at the poker table, and it can be very valuable, especially if you’re paying attention to WHEN you see it, in relation to what cards are out on the board. This can help you narrow hand ranges down, and guess whether a person was drawing or not so that next time you know that they’re willing to draw for X amount of the pot, and bet larger.
You’ll usually see this when somebody is really reaching for a draw and it misses, or at the end of the hand when they just couldn’t let go of the good starting hand. This occurs whether they have to show their hand or not (Sidenote: A rule players aren’t commonly familiar with is, whoever has the last aggressive action(last person to bet or raise only), has to show their cards first, or concede the hand (muck) and you don’t unless you intend to challenge it(or they muck)) The most common time I see the projection of shame is when a person turns over a pair of aces or kings, with 2-9 for their kicker. They know that’s a joke to even turn over, and vs. somebody whose been betting or calling/raising the whole way its usually beat. The people who muck most likely missed a draw, or had top or 2nd pair on the flop that obviously didn’t hold up after the remaining 2 cards. [Read more…] about Poker Shame