Interesting little blurb on the Freakonomics blog this morning entitled When is a Poker Face Not a Poker Face? plugs a study finding that smiling or emotionally positive faces result in more mistaken folds that an emotionally neutral face:
The authors conclude that “the best ‘poker face’ for bluffing may not be a neutral face, but rather a face that contains emotional correlates of trustworthiness.”
Interesting, but not technically a “poker face” since of course it is revealing information about your hand. Perhaps this information could be used exploitively against very unobservant opponents, but in general I don’t think that smiling when you’re bluffing and glaring angrily when value betting is going to be a good strategy. Something tells me the subjects of this study were not serious poker players.
I got something completely different from that article. I read it as one may have better results if the face they show at all times at the table is one that evokes trust, rather than one that is a blank, emotionless face. That’s why they used the title they used.
It’s hard to say without reading the article, but the only example they cite is opponents “mistakenly folding” more often when you smile. I’d conclude from that if you always smiled, you’d also get more correct folds to your value bets. I think in this sense a “better poker face” would be one that makes your opponent make all mistakes more often, not just one particular mistake more often. The latter requires it to be used in an exploitive fashion, which I would say is by definition not a “poker face”.
In my reading of poker literature, most professionals claim to put much more weight on other aspects before “facial” tells. This study strips out what I think most professionals would view as the most important information,from the study:
“Note that this set-up strips-away or controls for much of the information that is commonly used by poker players when making a decision, which is outside the focus of our experimental question (e.g., position in the sequence of betting, size of the chip stack, the number of active players in the pot, etc.).”
According to the other reports on this study, your assessment:
“Something tells me the subjects of this study were not serious poker players.”
is correct. I don’t believe they were poker players at all.
The underlying research specifies:
“Data from a pre-experimental inventory found that participants were novice poker players as 12 of the 14 in this study played less than 10 hours/year. Moreover, all participants in this study tended to play more ‘live’ games than online games. In fact, 12 of 14 participants played more than 90% of their games ‘live’, rather than online.”
Good find, thanks!
Thanks for pointing out the Freakonomics post. Just one point. A constantly smiling face can be a poker face, as long as the attitude and smile is consistent. As long as you always look the same way, regardless of the hand, no information is given. So, if the study was accurate (and based on the other comments, it is questionable), then strategically, it makes sense that if you always have a trustworthy look about you and look confident, people will overestimate your hands. This may result in more folds when you do have the goods, but if properly exploited (i.e., when done with aggressive play where you want folds) it could prove useful.
Of course, if the study is inaccurate, then this is just academic and of no real practical use.