Poker tells

You’ll often hear that whenever good poker players (those who master the third and fourth levels of poker thought) play each other, they play the player rather than their cards. Past a certain level, poker becomes a game in which psychology takes front seat, ahead of mathematics which is the leading play-guiding factor on lower levels. Poker psychology is based on reads and tells, and on players’ abilities to read the tells their opponents drop while disguising their own hands and if possible, misleading their opponents. As far as tells and reads go, the fundamental concept guiding players’ actions is that keeping their opponents in the mist is not enough: they need to actually mislead them, to cause them to become certain of the wrong thing.

You probably all know Daniel Negreanu and his uncanny ability to read his opponents’ pocket cards. If you take a look at the following video:

You’ll see Negreanu in action against fellow Canadian Brad Booth also known as “Yukon” Brad.
The interesting thing in this hand is how Booth manages to jam Negreanu’s otherwise infallible radar and to cause him to hesitate a bit before making the big laydown. Negreanu does manage to evade the trap, after all, his instincts are among the best if they’re not THE best in poker, but still, Booth’s tactics cause him to hesitate a little before doing the right thing, and making Negreanu actually attempt to talk himself into a call is by no means and everyday achievement.

Many people don’t realize this, but this hand is probably the best illustration of how one should disguise his/her hand and how much potential there is in the mind games behind all the reads and tells.
Brad Booth turns a straight flush, calls Negreanu all the way to the river where he raises him just as the latter rivers a straight. This is when the mind games begin: what Booth is trying to achieve here is to make it look like he’s bluffing to steal Negreanu’s river bet. The circumstances are right, and sets up the trap perfectly: he actually tells Negreanu the hand he’s got, knowing that his opponent will not only not believe him, but might be mislead to think that he is desperate to make it look like he has a true monster in the pocket. What do you know? For a second there it actually seems to work. The play-bluff is so well portrayed by “Yukon” Brad, that Negreanu begins to talk himself into calling him down. He is way too experienced to act on emotion alone though. One can literally feel how his heart tells him to call Booth’s raise, but his mind calls for a time out and begins a cold analysis of the situation. At the end of the analysis, Kid Poker concludes that he could only possibly beat a bluff there, and even though it looks like that’s exactly what Booth has against him, the odds are unfavorable for a call as a flush may well be in the books.
Of course, just to keep his opponents guessing, Booth never shows his hand. Just to add to the confusion, a female voice at the end of the hand claims that she in fact had the nine of diamonds, which sows further confusion at the table. Nobody really knows what to make of it, and Esfandiari’s remarks make it quite clear that he appreciates the way Booth played that hand.
Some people will say that Booth didn’t exactly accomplish anything impressive in this hand. After all, he won with a straight flush, how hard can that be, right? And he did fail to get Negreanu to call him in the end. What these people fail to realize though is that out of God knows how many possible ways, Booth played this hand in the most optimal manner. He singled out a weakness and he exploited it in such a psychologically complex manner (see his “Canadian” comments which were probably intended to re-enforce his play-bluff) that he is worthy of all respect for it. At the end of the day, how many people can boast that they had the great Daniel Negreanu on the ropes like that, even if it was only for a brief moment.