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These two poker terms should have special relevance to RPGs. I’ll explain why in a moment – first, let’s make sure that everyone is on the same page as to meaning.

Bluffing

Bluffs are a rather broad subject. The traditional bluff in poker and other types of gambling is an attempt to make a weak hand look stronger than it really is, usually through a combination of a false tell and a betting strategy that would be appropriate if the hand was indeed stronger than it is, and the player is trying to conceal that fact.

But use of the term has broadened in recent years, to include any attempt at perpetrating a falsehood in a card game – from making strong hands look weak (to encourage rival players to bet more than they should, given the relative strengths of their hands) to mind games in general at the gaming table, which include the traditional usage of the term.

Tells

“A tell in poker is a change in a player’s behavior or demeanor that is claimed by some to give clues to that player’s assessment of their hand. A player gains an advantage if they observe and understand the meaning of another player’s tell, particularly if the tell is unconscious and reliable. Sometimes a player may fake a tell, hoping to induce their opponents to make poor judgments in response to the false tell. More often, people try to avoid giving out a tell, by maintaining a poker face regardless of how strong or weak their hand is.”
– text from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tell_(poker).

The term literally means “inadvertently telling the truth” through behavior, betting strategy, body language, expression, or whatever.

There is even a branch of study within the gambling world that looks at tells for online poker games, such as those found at an online or a mobile casino, which includes things like inconsistent speed of bet placement, size of bets, responses to batting counter-strategies, and so on. Testing has shown that these can improve the chances of winning a game by as much as 8-10%.

More traditional tells – and these will be relevant, shortly – include:
 

• Acting uninterested in a hand while still in it – Feigning disinterest while continuing active involvement in a hand is usually a sign of a strong hand.
• Shaking hands – This is often an involuntary response to a surge of adrenalin which indicates that the player has something to be excited about.
• Rapid Breathing – same cause, different physiological response. If the change in breathing pattern is sudden and mid-hand, it may also be a sign of panic, indicating that a hand is much weaker than the player is suggesting, and that they may be trying to bluff.
• Overacting – Making a big production of sighs and shrugs while offering weak statements such as “I guess I’ll call” are really bad attempts at feigning disinterest (see above), but some players simply become louder and more exuberant when attempting to “sell” a bluff. They are “trying hard” and unable to hide that fact.
• Looking away from the table immediately after placing a bet or checking one’s hand – often, the very fact that you are trying not to engage interpersonally signals very loudly that you are trying to hide something.
• Playing with one’s cards – rearranging them or repeatedly re-checking them – tends to be a signal that your hand is much weaker than you have otherwise indicated.
• There are those who would add Trash-talking and boasting to the list.
• Of course, the cliche tells come to us from Hollywood – trying to scope out the other players from the corners of your eye, raising eyebrows the first time you look at your cards, playing nervously with your chips, whistling, or humming.

(partially based on a list at www.Thoughtco.com).

I want to call out a couple of specific items that aren’t on the list above:

The double-bluff

Of course, sometimes players will fake a tell while pretending to bluff in an attempt to double-bluff the opposition. Most professionals consider this too prone to error to attempt it, and an amateur move. Most amateurs will do it anyway.

The deliberate poker face

Some players work a lot harder at assuming an expressionless “poker face” when they have a good hand, while being relaxed and sociable the rest of the time.

Better tactics

Ideally, as a player, you want to behave in exactly the same way regardless of the strength of your hand. Make the same small talk, express the same measure of interest in what others are doing, and so on. Almost as effective is picturing some other hand in your mind’s eye and playing, betting, and so on, as though that imaginary hand were really what you have.

The Tell and The Bluff

Clearly, a tell is the natural enemy of the bluff, undercutting attempts to provide false information with a direct line to the truth.

The GM’s Bluff

GMs have to bluff all the time in RPGs. We’re playing characters who know things they may be trying to hide – and we may or may not want the players to pick up on that. WE know things that we’re trying to hide so as not to influence the player’s choice of action. Or perhaps the players have discovered a major flaw in our plans and we don’t want them to know it.

A previous article that I wrote touches on the subject, and even offers some techniques. The Hierarchy Of Deceit: How and when to lie to your players. But that was more concerned with plot developments and how to hide the GM’s superior knowledge in that respect of the game.

But a GM needs to bluff on a lot more occasions than are discussed in that article. That’s not particularly difficult – what’s harder is doing it well, and what’s even harder is not giving the game away with a tell.

GM ‘Tells’

Most of the poker ‘tells’ have RPG/GM equivalents (told you I’d get back to that list). Let’s walk through the entries.

• Acting uninterested in what the players are doing – pretending to be disinterested only makes the players suspicious because the players know better – and would expect more from a good GM. So if you’re a good GM this won’t work, and if you’re not, you couldn’t pull it off anyway.
• Shaking hands – The stress of running a game is high, but not that high. It’s the stakes involved that cause adrenalin rushes when gambling. So this is an obvious fake, one that few GMs would even think of trying. But there is an equivalent that most GM’s will recognize: we get a little clumsier with our die rolls at critical moments or when we’re concentrating hard because what’s happening is important. Dropping dice off the table is an occupational hazard, and a lot of GMs use a tray or some equivalent to prevent it. But I would bet that few ever recognized the association – we roll so many dice that we consider it inevitable that some will go overboard, and so think nothing more of it when it happens.
• Rapid Breathing – this is one poker tell for which there is no obvious equivalent. But I have experienced a couple of GMs who spoke more quickly when important points came up in an adventure, which is a reasonable if inobvious point of equivalence.
• Overacting – While the outward behavior may be different, the same cause – “trying hard” and unable to hide the fact – still leads to the same umbrella behavior. But it’s not overacting a pose as ourselves, it’s over-enthusiasm in descriptions and overacting as NPCs.
• Looking away from the table immediately after placing a bet or checking one’s hand – there are two GM equivalents of this one. The first is pretending to be too busy with your adventure notes or with the rulebook to pay close attention immediately after delivering your misleading statement. The second is deliberately trying to distract yourself by demanding that a player make some sort of die roll for reasons that may be valid but flimsy in justification. In both cases, as with the poker ‘tell’, the very fact that you are trying not to engage interpersonally signals that you are trying to hide something, though neither signal is as clear or obvious as the poker equivalent. It’s still a way of focusing on something other than interpersonal interaction with the players, though.
• Playing with one’s cards – It’s not common, but I have seen GMs and players who could not stop playing around with their dice – sorting them by color, by size, in groups of 3, or 5, or 10, or whatever. Is that the equivalent? I suspect so, but I’m not certain.
• There are no equivalents that I can think of to the remaining examples of alleged ‘tells’, which is why I was more hesitant about listing them.

In the article I linked to earlier, I listed a number of techniques for deceiving the players when it was necessary or desirable. None of them are worth very much if you are sabotaging your own efforts with a tell.

Avoiding Tells

Finding good advice on how to avoid poker tells is surprisingly hard. Finding such advice that can translate into an RPG setting is very much harder.

For example, some of the best advice for in-person poker players is to be consistent and follow the same routine whether you have a good hand or bad. That’s something that GMs can work with.

Another piece of advice that translates is to relax your face into a neutral expression, or better yet (when playing an NPC), into an imitation of the emotion that you want that NPC to be expressing (it really does help your “acting” performance).

Take at least one, and preferably two, breaths before speaking. In poker, the actual recommendation is to take deep breaths, but that isn’t appropriate for a game that’s based on communications. Nor is advice about not speaking to others at the gaming table.

At the poker table, the advice is to sit up straight and move steadily and purposefully, so as to avoid body language tells. That won’t work for an RPG DM, either. In fact, given the nature of the role, advice would have to be predicated on doing the exact opposite in many respects – being casual and relaxed.

The best solution that I have found is to decide in advance what the story is that you are trying to ‘sell’ as the truth, then concentrate on that as completely as possible. This works because both stories are essentially works of fiction of equal veracity so far as the players are concerned. Neither is a “true” story – not even in-game, until we decide to make it so.

Musing

That’s the ultimate difference between an RPG and a game of real-life poker, with real stakes. What we do is an entertainment, done for mutual fun. They play for sheep stations. If you’re feeling inclined to stretch your imagination, contemplate the way our game would change if the GM had to pay XP to players in real currency from our own pockets, with the players fronting the money to participate. I can’t think of a faster way to kill the fun, substituting a sense of competition. And there would always be a suspicion that the ‘house’ – the GM – was shortchanging the players to their own profit. Trust would quickly vanish, replaced by competition – a completely different form of excitement.

And that yields a (speculative) key insight into the competitive gaming that takes place at conventions, where there are prizes on offer. I’ve always been aware that there is a subtle but profound difference between convention gaming and the more common at-home gaming, but I was never able to quite put my finger on it. Now, though, the truth seems to be laid bare. And it posits the question: are the best convention games the ones in which the story is so compelling that the competitive aspects are forgotten by the participants? I tend to think so, but I’ve never run a convention game. Still, it sounds right to me. Can anyone who has done both confirm or comment?