Poker Coach Reveals How to Read a Date’s Body Language

Poker is often misunderstood as a game of tricks and deception, but the best players will tell you it’s really about judgement, patience, and trusting your gut instincts. Dating isn’t all that different. We overthink texts, second-guess signals, and try to play it “right”, only to end up doing too much.

To figure out which “tells” actually matter (and which ones we overthink), we spoke with poker coach Steve Blay, founder of Advanced Poker Training and advisor to 2016 World Series of Poker champion Qui Nguyen. He shared how our instincts, body language cues, and bluff-spotting skills used at the poker table can translate to the dating world.

What’s the single best poker lesson people could apply to dating?

“I really think that poker players have the same problem that people have when they go on a date, that they try to overcomplicate things.

“We have a term for this in the poker world. A friend of mine who’s one of the godfathers of poker, Mike Caro, calls this ‘Fancy Play Syndrome’. FPS is his initials for it. He feels that poker players tend to try all these crazy trick plays to deceive their opponents, more than is necessary.

“I think the same could be said of people going on dates. They forget that advice. Hasn’t your mother ever told you to just be yourself?

“Poker players glorify these overaggressive bully players, they want to be obnoxious like them. Even when that’s just not their personality. It’s the same with dating. People try too hard to be someone they’re not on a date, and it’s really having results opposite to what they think of. They thought it would impress their date when actually it doesn’t impress anyone at all when you’re not just being yourself.

“So both in poker and in dating, the single biggest poker lesson is don’t try too hard. Just be yourself and the cards fall the way they would. Trying to be deceptive is probably not going to achieve your goals.”

What’s the biggest mistake people make when they try to read body language on dates?

“I think, again, people often try too hard and they don’t want to trust their instincts. They’re reading too much into these little cues.

“If you Google it nowadays, I know there’s a million articles on ‘The top 10 signs, your date doesn’t like you’. Oh, they pulled on their ear. That’s a dead giveaway. They don’t like you. People get really bent out of shape about that stuff. It’s so easy to misinterpret all those signals and overcomplicate it.

“You’ve been on this Earth for many years, so you probably have some pretty good instincts. You know whether someone likes you or not, and you can trust those instincts.

“So again, just remember to trust your instincts and be yourself. I think a lot of the trickery and trying too hard is just counterproductive.”

If dating is poker, what’s the biggest ‘tell’ someone should learn to recognize?

“I don’t think tells should be trusted too much, but if there’s one tell that usually can be trusted, both in poker and in dating, it’s posture.

“If someone is actually interested in you, they’re leaning forward. Their posture is loose and relaxed. If you’ve ever been talking to someone and they’re leaning back, their arms are crossed, and look very rigid, clearly someone is not having a very good time. You can’t fake that very well. Those are involuntary reactions to whether you’re comfortable or not.

“People always are uncomfortable when they’re bluffing, because bluffing is lying. At the core of what it is, it’s lying.

“If you knew the number of poker books written on, ‘when someone scratches their head, it means they’re bluffing or have a bad hand’, it’s not useful. The same could be said for going on a date and looking out for microexpressions, which, again, is clickbait.

“But if there is one tell that actually I think is pretty accurate, it’s posture because people just do that involuntarily.

“At the end of the day, the human body is uncomfortable with lying. There’s just these signs that someone is uncomfortable that really are subconscious and involuntary that people can’t hide.”

How could poker teach us to read signals or facial expressions, for when a date could be lying?

“You have to use your instincts. There’s, as I said, plenty of poker books written on all these little signs that someone may be bluffing or not. And I’m sure there’s an equal number of books on dating and relationships that talk about all these little micro signs. For the most part, we do need to just remember, though, that you really do have good instincts.

“But if I had to say one specific thing, something I use at the poker table is to talk to people a lot. When someone is lying, that conversation will always seem contrived in some way because, again, people are uncomfortable when they are lying.

“The more you talk to someone, the more they’re going to give everything away because something just seems off about the conversation. They fumble over their words in some way. Something just seems contrived about the conversation in a way that you can’t always say specifically exactly what it is, but you just know that someone is being deceptive with you.

“I would encourage people on a date to not worry about what the internet says are the top five signs that someone doesn’t like you, and just talk to their date and trust their instincts.”

What’s the biggest ‘poker face tell’, a moment someone’s mask slips?

“Not making eye contact, that really is the big one.

“Again, when people are lying, they feel uncomfortable. Quite often, they don’t make eye contact. The more you talk to them, watch their eyes. If they’re just staring off into space, especially when they’re talking, they don’t want to look directly at you. I think that’s a big tell that someone is being deceptive in one way or another.

Are there any micro-behaviors you’d watch for in dating that mirror poker (e.g. hand fidgeting, self-soothing, posture changes, sudden stillness)?

“You definitely see those behaviors, both in poker and in dating.

“Hand fidgeting, self-soothing with girls with long hair. It’s a lot of playing with the hair and stuff like that. Those definitely come up, but I got to caution people, again, about trusting those behaviors because those could be interpreted either way.

“In poker, those tells are equally misinterpreted. The hand shaking is one thing. Sometimes they’re pushing their chips in the pot and their hands are shaking while they’re doing that. Someone might look at that at nervousness and bluffing. 

“In my experience, it’s the exact opposite of that. When someone is shaking, that is because they have a great hand. They have an incredible poker hand, and they are so nervous about all the money they’re just about to win, and they can’t hold in that emotion of how excited they are about this poker hand. This is a common poker tell that is absolutely misinterpreted by amateurs.

“So I think the same with dating. Someone on a date could look really nervous, and maybe you might interpret it and say they’re not having a very good time. But in reality, it could be the exact opposite of that. They’re having a great time and they are really nervous they will mess it up.

“Interpreting those (micro-behaviors) correctly is a more difficult task. And I would caution people about drawing too many conclusions just based on those.”

What are the biggest tells that someone is bluffing confidence rather than genuinely confident?

“Just talk to them more. And the more you talk to them, they’re going to give everything away. I certainly do that at the poker table.

“The same is true with dating. The more you talk to someone, I think they’re going to give their true feelings away. When someone is faking it, they can only hold it in so long until they break. Eventually, your instincts are going to help you figure out what the truth is.”

How do you stop yourself from ‘chasing’ when the odds are clearly bad?

“There’s an expression, ‘throwing good money after bad’ [sunk cost fallacy].

“People do this in poker. They’ve already invested so much money, then they keep investing more and more. Yes, you’ve already lost a lot of money, but don’t keep losing more and more. Just get out of there if you’re losing.

“I see people do this all the time. They’re in a relationship and it’s definitely not working out, but they’ve been together for three months or six months. They’re like, ‘they’re going to change, right?’ You know this how?

“I think the sooner you can, when the odds are clearly bad, there’s a point when you just know it in your heart that relationship ain’t working out, and it’s time to cut your losses and not just let it drag on.

“It just goes back to trusting your instincts, again, at the end of the day.”

What signs tell you someone is going ‘all-in’ too soon, and how should you respond?

“In the poker world, when someone goes ‘all-in’, you certainly need to use caution because they’ve just bet all the chips or money they have. Clearly, that person means business.

“When someone’s ‘all-in’ really too soon in the dating world, they’re talking about marriage on the second date, I think that’s a good time to really take a step back and say, ‘whoa, time out.’ I would use caution here too.”

In online poker, timing tells can be huge. Could timing patterns in responses act like tells in dating?

“When you’re playing online poker, all you have is their avatar on the screen. The one tell you have to go by is what they call ‘timing tells’, which is when you make a bet and maybe the guy takes 10 seconds before calling your bet, or maybe they take 2 seconds.

“And what can you interpret into these timing tells? If they take 2 seconds, are they really confident? Or if they take 2 seconds, are they faking it and trying to pretend like they’re really confident? Again, those tells in poker can be unreliable because people can fake that, obviously.

“With dating and how long it takes someone to reply to your text, maybe you can draw some conclusion here. They might take a long time, but maybe it has nothing to do with you – maybe they just got sidetracked or their roommate walked in.  You could probably read something into those, but you don’t want to put too much faith in that.”

Biography

Steve Blay is the founder of Advanced Poker Training, the World’s #1 Poker Training Site. He served as a poker advisor to 2016 World Series of Poker champion Qui Nguyen.

Blay is also a certified chess coach and poker tournament director. He has led the Secrets of the World Champions seminar in Las Vegas, and in 2026 is running the Champion Maker seminar at BestBet Jacksonville.

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