At the Bellagio poker room, topflight player Mori Eskandani takes me on a tour spanning all levels of play. But up in the high-stakes room, the pros, playing for thousands of dollars a hand, are a blank slate. Reading them is a much more subtle game. It's Important to Detach Sometimes Phil Hellmuth agrees. I just have an innate sense.
Poker players are the best people in the world at determining when someone's lying.
At the top levels, it's not an obvious tell that gives a player away, but an overall aura, a subtle shift in shoulder position, the set of the mouth, pupil dilation. It's the sort of thing that's nearly impossible to quantify, though many have tried. Still, even among top players, tells show up. But no pro wants to divulge specific tells they have on opponents - then they'd lose that edge. At the last hand, with everything on the line, I looked over to see if I could spot the tell.