This is the third post in a series about Guy Laliberte's poker tells. This one will include a short analysis of Laliberte's bet timing tells. It's admittedly a small sample size, but what stands out is that when Laliberte chooses to bluff in a significant spot, it seems he is more likely to bet or raise quickly, within a few seconds. When he has a big hand, he is more likely to take a long time. ...
Studying Guy Laliberte’s poker tells, Part 2
In my last post I talked about some possible poker tells Guy Laliberte might have had during the One Drop. None of it was very conclusive, just because there were so few hands involving Guy, and only one where he made a significant bluff. In this post I wanted to look back at some old hands from a few years ago, to see if we could spot some of the same behavior. To summarize my last post, the ...
One Drop Tournament: Guy Laliberte’s poker tells
I spent the last couple days studying footage of Guy Laliberte playing poker. I started out studying the One Drop $1 million buy-in tournament final table footage, with the goal of picking up significant patterns Guy might have in significant hands. There were quite a few hands where Guy had strong hands and obviously wanted action. The problem was that there was really only one significant bluff ...
Chris Moneymaker getting a live read on Chris Oliver
I've been too busy to do many interesting blog posts lately, but I plan on doing some more in-depth televised poker analysis soon, on the level of what I did with the Pius Heinz WSOP 2011 footage. For now, I'll just post this video where it seems that Chris Moneymaker has a really good live read on his opponent Chris Oliver. This isn't just an interpretation; Moneymaker actually tells his "mental ...
Phil Ivey talks about poker tells
Phil Ivey recently sat for an interview (which is a rare thing) conducted by Nolan Dalla. Although it was just a few soft-ball questions (no mention of Full Tilt Poker stuff), it still gives a very interesting glimpse into Ivey's mind, in my opinion. He also talks a little bit about poker tells. ...
Mental and emotional stress of poker
I'm posting an old piece piece I wrote, from two years ago, about the emotional stress of the game for me specifically. I wrote it right after I’d been knocked out of a tournament by playing a hand very badly, and while I was very frustrated with myself. I’ve been planning on reading and reviewing Jared Tendler’s The Mental Game of Poker as soon as I get some extra time, because I’ve been ...
Review of Christopher Dillingham’s Dissecting Pinocchio
Christopher Dillingham's "Dissecting Pinocchio" is a good book on lie detection. Dillingham is a police officer who's well-versed in interrogations, and you can tell from his stories that he has a lot of experience to back up his observations. He also talks about studies that have been done about lie detection. The best thing about this book is the author's realism about lie detection. There ...
Review of Philip Newall’s The Intelligent Poker Player
In order to review Philip Newall’s book The Intelligent Poker Player in an accurate and practical way, I must reveal that I am very far from being a great limit poker player. (I could extrapolate to no-limit poker, but let me humble myself a little bit at a time.) I want to be honest about the weaknesses in my game so that players who are decent but not great at limit poker (people like myself) ...
I’m interviewed on Badugi Allstars poker podcast
The boys at Badugi Allstars interviewed me on their poker podcast. Talk included: Why I wrote the book What makes my book different from other poker tells books The importance of correlating tells with specific situations Some discussion on the common tell of defensive chip handling Dissing Joe Navarro and Mike Caro (respectfully) Penis-shaped doughnuts (it's a Portland, Oregon ...
More poker tells in Rounders (besides KGB’s Oreo)
Hi, I'm Zach Elwood, the author of the book Verbal Poker Tells (amongst other poker tells projects). This is my blog. My email acquaintance Michael Blinder recently wrote to point out something very awesome in the movie Rounders. Both Teddy KGB and Mike McDermott (Matt Damon’s character) exhibit a few poker tells besides the infamous Oreo cookie one. Both of them exhibit a kind of poker tell I ...