I'm doing a live poker tells webinar on September 25th at 6pm PST (9pm EST). It costs $55. Tickets are on sale now on this page: www.readingpokertells.com/poker-tells-webinar. The webinar is basically the same presentation I did live in Las Vegas this past summer. The response to those seminars was very positive. You can read some attendee testimonials here: ...
Got a mention in 2013 WSOP ME Final Table from Norman Chad
I meant to put this up a lot earlier, but here it is. Last November (2013), I was in Vegas, hired by Amir Lehavot to study his opponents (and himself) at the WSOP ME final table. After Lehavot went out in third, I still watched the final heads-up portion of the game closely from a hotel room on the 15-minute delay. Earlier in the WSOP ME coverage, on Day 6, Norman Chad had given me a very ...
Jason Lavallee on immediate bets being polarizing
Kristy Arnett interviewed Canadian poker pro Jason Lavallee in 2013 for PokerNews (click here for full audio interview.) In the audio interview, he talked about a queen-high call-down he made in a European Poker Tour event. His opponent's bet-timing played a role in his decision. Basically, he thought that an immediate bet meant that her range was polarized, because most players don't know what to ...
Jonathan Little: Paying attention to opponent behavior
The following is a guest blog post from Jonathan Little. Little is a two-time WPT champion with over $5,000,000 in career earnings. He is the owner of the training site FloatTheTurn.com and is the author of numerous best-selling poker books. You can follow him on twitter @JonathanLittle. Jonathan is running a series of live seminars during the 2014 WSOP with poker tells author Zachary Elwood. ...
Recent Vegas Trip and Poker Tells Seminar
I went to Vegas last week for a week, mainly for the poker tells seminar I was doing, but also to play some poker and do some promotional stuff for the book. (If you haven't heard about the poker tells presentation I'm doing, here's a PokerNews article talking about it: http://learn.pokernews.com/news/2014/06/poker-tells-seminar-at-wsop-makes-use-of-unique-behavioral-d-4355.htm.) The seminar ...
Poker tells seminar during WSOP this summer
I've been invited to be part of a poker seminar in Vegas this summer during the WSOP. My part of the presentation will be 2.5 hours about poker tells, using a lot of televised poker footage. The cost is $499 and the dates are June 14, July 5 and July 7. Here is the details page, where you can also see a video I made about my part of the seminar: www.floattheturn.com/seminar. You can get a $100 ...
A Live Tell in 2-7 Triple Draw
This following is a guest blog post from Los Angeles poker player Josh Hale. You can follow Josh Hale on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/red_stagg. The Los Angeles Poker Classic just concluded and with it, one of my favorite times of the year for poker. I count myself amongst the many people consider the LAPC to be one of the best tournament series of year (perhaps second only to the WSOP) ...
Drinking your own urine and playing poker
When it comes to poker, I have a very Eastern philosophy. Some people think that getting better at poker is all about studying hand histories and opponent’s “ranges” and things like that. That’s part of getting better, sure, but there’s only so far such dedicated, logical study can take you. Over the years I’ve experimented with transcendental meditation, hypnotherapy, yoga, asceticism, ...
Review of Ed Miller’s book Playing The Player
I wrote a book review of Ed Miller's 2012 book Playing the Player, which you can read here: https://www.readingpokertells.com/review-of-playing-the-player-by-ed-miller ...
Review of Playing the Player, by Ed Miller
I’ve been meaning to review Ed Miller’s poker book Playing the Player for a while. One of the main reasons I wanted to review it is that it’s recommended on Amazon as a similar purchase when people buy my book, apparently because people bought our two books together a lot. They probably are a good combination because they both deal with exploiting observable tendencies and patterns of predictable, ...
Poker trip to Los Angeles, observing verbal behavior
I spent a week in L.A. at the end of February, playing poker and appearing in a couple episodes of the live-streaming poker show Live at the Bike. I played primarily $5-5 and $5-10 NLHE cash games. I haven’t played much at all in the last few years, so it was an interesting and educational trip, getting back into playing all the time and seeing how people were playing at these stakes. I’d also ...
Played embarrassingly bad on Live At The Bike $5-10 NLHE
I played $1-3 PLO last Tuesday on Live At The Bike and then $5-10 NLHE last night. I got made fun of for my PLO play, which I didn't care about because I hadn't played PLO in six years and was never very good at it. Last night, though, I was embarrassed by my play. A bit of it was due to my anxiety and a bit of it was due to drinking a couple glasses of red wine on an empty stomach. I'd also ...
Excerpt from Verbal Poker Tells: General verbal behavioral tendencies
The following is an excerpt from my book-in-progress, which will be called Verbal Poker Tells. This is not the final version and is still being edited and is subject to change. Any comments and criticisms on these general ideas are very much appreciated. There is a lot of complexity in verbal poker behavior. Anyone who’s played a lot of poker knows there are many factors that can lead someone ...
Reading tells in Cards Against Humanity & Apples To Apples
Apples To Apples and Cards Against Humanity are similar games. Apples To Apples is a popular G-rated party game. Cards Against Humanity is like its R-rated cousin; exactly similar in play but with much darker, twisted content. These games are not seriously played and are usually just an excuse for the players to laugh at the humorous juxtaposition of ideas. Even though these games are not ...
Players who get more relaxed and talkative when winning
An acquaintance of mine emailed me this story from his home game. This is a small stakes home game: .10 Euro blinds, NLHE. My response follows his email. There's something I realized last saturday. We were playing six handed and of the guys was winning big time. Let's call him Robert. He hit every hand, was paid off every time, it was just his evening. Normally, he is one the more losing ...
A Queen-high call down involving immediate bets from an opponent
I saw this PokerNews story where Kristy Arnett interviewed Jason Lavallee, the winner of this year's PokerStars European Poker Tour London High Roller, about a Queen high call-down he made on the final table of that tournament. Here's the story: http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/strategy-with-kristy-jason-lavallee-discusses-a-queen-high-c-16743.htm ...
Analysis of Sylvain Loosli’s potential poker tells in 2013 WSOP Main Event
In this post, I’m going to describe my analysis of Sylvain Loosli that I did prior to and during the 2013 WSOP Main Event final table. I had been hired by Amir Lehavot to analyze his opponents and himself for possible behavioral leaks. The point of this post is not just to talk about how I went about trying to find patterns in Loosli and what those patterns may have been, it’s also to talk about ...
Analyzing poker tells for Amir Lehavot at the 2013 WSOP Main Event
A couple weeks before the WSOP Main Event final table, I got an email from Amir Lehavot (founder of PokerWit.com and 3rd in this year's WSOP ME), asking if I’d be interested in helping him prepare for the final table. After discussing what I might be able to do to help him, and making sure we had similar expectations, I agreed. My role was to analyze existing footage of his opponents for possible ...
Reading Poker Tells book mentioned in 2013 WSOP
This year, during the World Series of Poker Main Event broadcast, my book Reading Poker Tells got a shout-out from Norman Chad. Here's the clip; go to the 1hr1m point if it doesn't automatically take you there. I'd sent a copy of Reading Poker Tells to Norman a few months ago, but I've sent out so many books over the past year to people (roughly $4,000 worth!) and haven't heard back from ...
A couple of interesting hands from $1-2 NL
Just a couple interesting spots from some recent hands where someone's behavior played a role in my decision-making. First one is from $1-2 NL. I had about $700 and the guy directly to my left had about $600. A couple limpers in front of me. I limp with 46 of diamonds. The guy directly to my left was an older guy who was "tricky", and who liked to make small raises pre-flop as pot-builders in ...
Should have folded top set
This isn't related to poker tells or behavior in any way. Just a hand I played yesterday that I spent a lot of time thinking about so I thought I'd share it. It was a $2-5 game. I only have $400 in front of me. I usually am significantly deeper and my shorter stack plays a role in this hand. This game can vary from super loose to mostly tight and it was in the mostly tight range yesterday. In ...
Working on a new poker tells book
I'm working full-time on another poker tells book. The book will be called Verbal Poker Tells and will focus specifically on all things verbal at the poker table: the things people say and how they say them. It will use a lot of examples from actual hands, both televised and hands played by me and others. I've been collecting a fairly large database of verbal patterns and will use this database to ...
Immediate bets and calls in a $2-5 hand
I've been much more attuned to bet-timing tells lately, just going out of my way to study it more. I think bet-timing tells are responsible for a lot of the more subtle reads of situations that experienced players can get. I also think a lot of the time this stuff can be analyzed in an instinctual way by experienced players. For instance, in the hand I'm going to describe, I think a lot of ...
No rechecking of hole cards on flush-y board helps define opponent’s range?
Played $2-5 NL today and this hand went down. I raise from CO with 8c8d to $20. I get a call from the big blind. We have a little bit of history because he’s a bit steamed from a hand an hour or so ago where I value-bet a flush for a lot of money on the turn and he made a bad call for all his chips with a straight and lost. I get the feeling he’s a bit steamed at me or at least wants to get some ...
Why I don’t wear headphones at the poker table
There's a lot of information at the poker table. Which is why I don't wear headphones. I never want to restrict the possible auditory information I might pick up. A hand I played in Vegas a couple weeks ago illustrates this point very nicely... ...