The purpose of this week’s article is to introduce you to a concept you’re already very familiar with (at least subconsciously), and apply it to the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG.

Discussion—be it verbal, through text mediums, or over the phone—is the most common form of communication between two people. But sometimes, nothing gets the point across like good old-fashioned body language. Your non-verbal communication can often say much more than words ever could, for better or for worse. It can reveal what you’re really feeling even when you don’t want to. What you say with words and what your body tells the person you’re talking to are sometimes two different things, and it’s harder to lie in person than through less direct mediums.

Aside from being a strategy game, our favorite hobby is also an exercise in carefully executed ploys of deception. At its core, Yu-Gi-Oh! is a game of imperfect information. You rarely know every move your opponent is about to make. Failing to read your opponent correctly is usually the deciding factor between two players in a high-level match. As such, it’s essential that you learn to break any intended misdirection. You can do that by learning to read visual cues (or "tells") from your opponent in order to guess whether they are bluffing or not. While every player has his or her own way of saying, "I’m lying about what’s in my hand or field and I don’t want you to find out," it’s important to know the common body movements and fidgety habits in order to piece it all together. No single factor should be looked at in isolation. If you do, you may find yourself getting the wrong impression of your opponent’s current position.

Your hands say a lot more than you think. There’s a common habit amongst players in which they shuffle the cards in their hands very quickly while pondering the next move or watching the opponent. This nervous habit says a few things: "Hurry up and make your move already," "I’m nervous and I hope you don’t have anything to stop my next few plays," or it could mean that your opponent is intensely focused on the field situation. If the latter is the case, then the shuffling is merely a way to release tension in an intense situation like a Shonen Jump feature or Top 8 match. Think of it as just nervous jittering.

I’m sure you’ve seen someone clench their hands together before, right? When you see someone clench their hands, pay attention to how white their fingers or knuckles get. Most of the time, it denotes that the person is in a negative or frustrated mood. Another important detail is the elevation of the person’s clenched hands. You should look for one of three positions: clenched hands on the lap (not too easy to see for obvious reasons), clenched hands resting on the table, or clenched hands up to the person’s face. The higher the elevation, the worse the attitude is at the moment. Someone who can keep a straight face during play may put his or her hand down. Then that person will clench his or her hands together in order to keep any frustration from showing through the normal avenues. This is a good indicator that things aren’t going the way your opponent would like them to.

Have you ever stood in front of your class to present something and found that a few of your classmates had their heads slanted and resting on one hand? This generally indicates boredom. The more they allow their faces to rest on their hands, the more bored they are. If you see your opponent doing this during a match, he or she might be very bored from slow play or bored or frustrated with the game because the situation is not in his or her favor.

Some other micro-gestures are executed with the hands, and there are a few that most people carry with them from childhood. Have you ever noticed that when small children lie, they cover their mouths before they do it? It’s as if they are trying to stop what will be said. Have you ever seen them cover their ears? Or put their hands over their eyes? These are all indications that someone is lying to you. If you want an example of what these gestures look like, perform a Google search for "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil." As you get older, these gestures become more sophisticated. Teenagers and adults don’t cover their eyes when they lie, but instead may scratch their eye two to three times instead while replying or talking. Another form of the "see no evil" concept is rubbing your eye when you’re saying something that is not true or hear something you don’t agree with entirely. Generally, scratching or rubbing a spot that is irritating is very deliberate. By deliberate I mean scratching four, five, or six times to get rid of an itch for good. You know that when you need to scratch at an itch, two scratches doesn’t usually get rid of it. The same applies to rubbing an irritated eye with your finger. Take the time to pay attention to the way someone moves when he or she talks to you and watch for these cues.

I’ve seen many other slick tactics that often go unnoticed during conversations. Have you ever heard someone lie to you and start to scratch the back of his or her neck two or three times? Have you seen a person cover his or her mouth slightly with a finger when saying something that’s clearly not true? Or maybe you’ve noticed someone lightly grab his or her ear lobe when asked to respond to a question he or she is pretending to know the answer to? These are small indications of a liar in your presence. When you lie verbally, your body will give you away almost every time. Subconsciously you know you’re not being honest so you’ll execute some kind of body movement to try to cover it up. Again, that’s why it’s easier to lie when you’re on the phone or on the internet. You can tell a lot by word choice or inflection, but not nearly enough to discover any kind of deceit.

Your hands are generally the most active during a match. While the above cues are general in nature, they are good indicators of what to watch for during play. If you are a verbal player and like to ask your opponent questions in order to "break through" the lies, you can use those gestures as your guide. We normally respond to a question we are asked. Unless your opponent is truly excellent at controlling his or her body language, you’ll start to notice how incongruent the body movements are to what is being said.

There any many other hand gestures that are specific to this game. Many of them are small habits that some players have developed. When your opponent shuffles his or her hand immediately after drawing a card, this usually means that he or she drew something good and is shuffling in order to "conceal" this fact and hide the freshly drawn card. However, you may be deceiving yourself in the process. Remember when I mentioned that analyzing these cues in isolation may give you the wrong impression? You have to look at this holistically. The above example could be something that the opponent does no matter what card he or she draws. It’s very easy to get confused, so be careful. This takes practice.

Next week (Part 2), I’ll talk about different arm movements, eye contact, and other cues that you can look for to break through the web of imperfect information. Thanks for reading!

—Bryan Camareno