Fishman is trying to suggest that he is tired of being pushed around and that is why he is fighting back. Hellmuth bets into Fishman and Fishman feigns uncertainty, saying “I’m not gonna let you do this to me again, Phil.” Then he pushes all in. Here’s a very obvious one from the PokerStars Big Game (start at 14 minutes) where amateur David Fishman makes the nuts on the river against Phil Hellmuth. It’s like when an amateur player moves all-in with the nuts and says “I’m pretty short, might as well go all in.” (Here’s a link to a previous post about disclaimers.)īefore going on, though, let’s look at an example of this poker tell from a real game, just so you know this has real-world application. Both of them exhibit a kind of poker tell I call “disclaimers”, which are verbal statements designed to explain away (in other words, disclaim) the meaning behind an action. Both Teddy KGB and Mike McDermott (Matt Damon’s character) exhibit a few poker tells besides the infamous Oreo cookie one. My email acquaintance Michael Blinder recently wrote to point out something very awesome in the movie Rounders. Hi, I’m Zach Elwood, the author of the books Reading Poker Tells and Verbal Poker Tells, and the creator of a new poker tells video series.
