Quote Originally Posted by givememyleg View Post
I assume most poker tells vary depending on the person, but is there one general tell that you see over and over that you can share with us that can help live players?
I've seen a lot of people ask about the most common or most useful tells. Here are my thoughts on the most useful poker tells:

Eye contact behavior after betting: the patterns people have with how much they look at someone after betting can tell you a lot. Some people will make more eye contact after bluffing, while other people will make less eye contact after bluffing. You just need to study someone in significant spots and try to see if you notice a pattern with this. For some people, they will have a reliable tendency one way or another. But it is very much a player-specific tendency and you have to study it before basing decisions on it.

Defensive chip handling tells: how people handle their chips when waiting for you to act. Some people who don't want you to bet will subtly hold their chips or just place their hands on their chips in a way that can be interpreted as "defensive", not wanting you to bet. There are many subtle ways that can appear, but it usually is quite useful if you can spot people who do it.

Freeze-up tells in bluffing: some people get much stiller when bluffing than they are when they value-bet. This can be pretty subtle, too; it might just be the small looseness or stillness visible in how they move their fingers, or how they move their eyes around, or if they make small facial movements. So, like everything, you need to get some baseline behavior first.