Hiding Poker Tells

I have noticed something lately that I need to stamp on straight away. I realized that when I play live against people that I haven't played against before, that I am an open book in terms of tells. By that I mean that I am extremely easy to read. I think it is a cross between nervousness and being in a different environment. Whatever the reasons for it, the more I learn about tells in other players, the more I realize that I give off tells about me.

It just hit me the other night during my first tournament that this is a major flaw in my game. I don't think that my bluffs are easy to read, but I am pretty sure that when I hit a monster, the whole rooms knows about it.

So what do I do about this?

I recently listened to an interview by a former FBI agent who taught Phil Hellmuth how to cover his tells. He said he taught him the left hand over the right fist technique (see the image on the right). I am going to use this from now on no matter what kind of hand I have. I think the idea behind it is that it covers your face pretty well while still allowing you to look at other people.

Another thing that I have been practicing when I have a good hand is to tell myself that I am bluffing. For example, if I flop a flush, I need to keep repeating to myself in my mind that I completely missed it and I need to try to steal the pot with a high card. Hopefully this will send out some subconscious signals of weakness and encourage people to raise me.

I don't really want to go down the route of sunglasses and a baseball cap just yet because the best part of my game is reading others and I think that it may hinder me in that regard. However this might be something to seriously consider.

If anyone has any other tips or techniques that you think might help then let me know and I'll try them out.