The BBC Science website has an interesting test that I invite you to take and report back your results. The test lets you look at 20 faces and activate a micro-video of them smiling. The whole test takes less than ten minutes. Your task, should you choose to accept it, will be to decipher if the smile is genuine or fake.
I will suggest that such abilities away from the poker table is, in fact, a good measure of your skill in picking up tells at the table. You see many poker players believe that tells are indicators of whether or not a person has a weak or a strong hand. Wrong!
Tells are signs of a persons emotions and their reactive behavior to stress and anxiety. The change in their pulse or forehead or mouth takes place much faster than the brain processes: "That two of clubs made my flush."
So my point is that practicing and perfecting your reading skills is something that can be and should be done away from the poker table. If you can catch the fake smile or the nervous twitch of the eyebrow; it really doesn't matter if the person is bluffing with 72o or telling you how much they like your new shoes. The physical tells are the same and reading them correctly is your task.
Let us know how you did on the BBC test. My group of 'Poker Buddies' averaged only 12 out of 20; I need to play more poker with them!
