In June of 2019, I ran an essay contest. I’ll be posting the four winners of these on the blog. Here’s the third one. This is from Karl Zipple.
How Zachary Elwood’s books and videos have improved my poker game
by Karl Zipple
“All in.”
Not exactly what you want to hear after turning your ace high into a bluff on the river. Damn it, Karl. Why didn’t you just check? So stupid! Everyone already thinks you’re a maniac.
Wait. What if he’s bluffing? You’ve sat next to this guy every weekend for two months. Listen for his breathing.
Nothing. A quick glance shows he is in fact still breathing, so it isn’t literally a dead hand. But it’s quiet. Normal.
You know he starts breathing hard when he has a good hand. And he can’t be raising for thin value on the river; he just isn’t that guy. Maybe…
“That good, Ken?”
Nothing. Not a nod, not a look. He’s stoic, looking slightly down.
“I don’t even know why I’m pretending to think about calling. It’s impossible for me to beat anything.”
A tiny ghost of a smile crosses Ken’s lips. Just briefly, just for himself.
“Well, I guess I’ve made worse calls.”
………….
Zach Elwood’s books on poker tells are truly wonderful. Like every other poker player of a certain age, I first discovered poker by watching it on TV but first fell in love by watching it in Rounders. I wanted to be Mike McDermott. He seemed to own people’s souls with a casual glance. In the movie, it was so obvious. It seemed so easy! How could I lose?
When I finally turned 21 and went to play live poker, I learned how. Those tells that the movies made look like glitzy neon signs on the Las Vegas strip? If they were there, I had to be blind as a bat.
So I basically gave up on tells. There were a couple of videos on YouTube that looked like they were filmed during the Nixon administration, but they weren’t much use.
………….
“Dude, why didn’t you fold? Carpenter Jim is a massive tellbox.”
“What do you mean? What would you even look for?”
“Give me $25.”
“What?”
“I’ll give it back if you don’t think it’s worth it.”
….
I sat down and read Reading Poker Tells in one sitting. Obviously my friend got to keep my green chip.
Like the best poker strategy books, it gives you not only the theory of what you’re doing but helps you implement it. But it goes even beyond that. It teaches you how to create situations where your opponents can make mistakes and inadvertently reveal the strength of their hand. Since we aren’t actually in Rounders, your opponents will try to hide that information from you. But with the information from Zach’s books, you can learn how to uncover what they’re hiding and how to exploit it.
Don’t get me wrong. Well-written as they are, Zach’s books will not turn you into a tells expert right away. Just like learning that it’s good to raise opponents who have a capped range, the information itself is only the first step. Figuring out how to actually use it while you’re down in the live poker trenches is a different and much more challenging task.
The reason that Zach’s content is so much better than the generic tells information that’s out there is that he recognizes this challenge. Rather than give you a list of tells meant to work for everyone and sending you on your way, these books give you a broad, flexible system for thinking about tells. He gives you specific times to look for physical and verbal behaviors, external factors that may influence these behaviors, and a baseline for how most people tend to behave. As he always reminds you, however, these baselines are always subject to revision. Each opponent you play against is unique, and you need to pay attention to their unique behavioral idiosyncrasies.
Getting any edge at poker is never an easy thing. If it were easy, everyone would do it and the edge would disappear. Gaining a deep understanding and mastery of physical and verbal tells is a difficult process that takes hundreds (or thousands) of hours of deliberate practice in real poker situations. While I have worked hard at this over the years, I am by no means a master. I make mistakes all the time.
And ultimately, what makes Zach’s material so helpful is the fact that you can keep getting actionable information from it at every point in your journey towards mastering the use of tells. When I was a beginner, it blew my mind. Taking a systematic approach to spotting and analyzing tells was so far beyond my understanding that it changed my entire approach overnight. As I gained experience, I kept finding myself coming back to it, finding useful nuggets of information every time.
Whether you play live poker every day or once a month, you will benefit from studying tells. Even if you don’t think that you have the ability to spot other people’s tells, you will benefit from patching the holes in your own game where you might be leaking physical information. And then one day, you’ll notice your opponent stops breathing when they’re bluffing.
………….
“Nice call. What gave it away?”
“I just don’t like folding, man. It goes against my religion.”
I don’t know what inspired Zach to give away all these secrets. Please don’t read his books; I would rather the world be full of blissfully ignorant marks than sharks on the lookout for every tell.