I agree that card-like substitutes such as wood, leather, leaves etc. will suffer problems with unintentional markings and I think carved or baked tiles would be better to produce a uniform back.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen
In fact, I'd assume that most players, except the very best, tend to not win anything at all on a royal straight flush, because they cannot keep from telegraphing to the other players that they have a really good hand. With "tells", general enthusiasm not properly veiled, or overly enthusiastic betting. A hand that isn't the very best possible probably tends to yield a higher win.
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People overestimate the importance of tells in poker. Most people do not produce reliable tells and most people play the way they want to play, regardless of tells. It's also relatively easy to learn how not to produce visible tells.
The problem with winning a lot with a very strong hand is more that you need someone else to have a great hand (or be really bad at poker) and that usually isn't the case.
Straight flushes are actually a decent hand to have to get paid off because they are so rare that the other player will discount the likelihood that you have one. Also in Texas Hold Em at least it means the board is such that someone else can have a (normal) flush and therefore will pay you off.
Quads (with a pair in your hand) mean the board is probably quite "dry", i.e. doesn't connect will with anyone else's cards. You will almost certainly win the hand but unless they have a full house, you likely won't stack them.
Full houses suffer the same problem as quads, as the board is paired.
Flushes are relatively easy to detect since there must three or more cards of the same suit on the board.
Straights are actually a good hand to get paid in full since they can be difficult to detect.
Sets are strong and often hard to detect but vulnerable to stronger hands of course.
The above discussion refers to Texas Hold Em, other variants of poker provide less or no information about your opponents' possible holdings.
Anyway, sick bluffs and soul reading are elements of poker that are greatly overestimated in the public mind. Learning to do relatively simple but tedious mathematical calculations routinely during the game, careful observation of what cards players turn up with at the river and long, boring post-game analysis are much more important.
The main "tell" is how people play in given situations, since they tend to do the same kind of thing too often, for example betting small with big hands to keep opponents in and betting big with bluffs to drive people away (this is generally bad but common).