Poker pros’ arms betray their hands
The way players move chips when betting signals card quality
By Bruce Bower
No bluff: In high-stakes matches, a poker face may not be good enough. Players may have to develop “poker arms” as well.
When shown two-second video clips of the arms and hands of top players making bets in the World Series of Poker, college students did well at judging who was playing a strong hand and who wasn’t, say psychology graduate student Michael Slepian of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., and his colleagues.
But when viewing videos of only poker pros’ upper bodies or faces during bets, students couldn’t correctly predict whether players held good or bad cards, the researchers report Sept. 12 in Psychological Science.