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February 28, 2014
Q. Do you have a skillful enough “poker face” to help get you through those high-stakes matches?
A. Don't worry about your face at all, since that's not what's likely to betray your hand, says Bruce Bower in Science News magazine. When test subjects viewed video clips of the faces and upper bodies of opponents, they couldn't correctly predict whether the other players held good or bad cards. In other words, the poker faces of experienced players gave away nothing. Quite surprisingly, however, “professional poker players' ARM MOVEMENTS enabled untrained observers to decode poker-hand quality,” reported Tufts University graduate student Michael Slepian. What seemed to be the give-away for good cards was smooth arm movement when players pushed chips forward to make bets. Bluffers, on the other hand, seemed to move their arms somewhat awkwardly.
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