Read ‘em and Reap: A Career FBI Agent’s Guide to Decoding Poker Tells |
Author: Joe Navarro Publisher: Harper Paperbacks Pages: 240 Pub. Date: 2006 Price: $12.91 |
Book Review: Part 2
Nor does Navarro ignore the fact that the players seeking to understand others’ tells are emitting tells of their own. The next phase of the book delves into some of this, and Navarro goes for the simplest baseline, telling players to adopt a highly robotic approach, though how that can be adopted by more dynamic personalities is of course each player’s personal test. And did you know that a person’s most honest body parts are… their feet? Sure, you can’t see the feet of the player across from you at the table, but there are ways to determine whether those feet are bluffing or riding a pat hand, and Navarro spends a few pages explaining exactly what to look for.
The largest part of the book is a series of chapters examining “high confidence” and “low confidence” body-language tells, and how to identify and interpret them correctly. Among these are such concepts as gravity-defying tells, territorial tells, tells of the hands, mouth and eyes, and pacifying behaviors. Pursing lips, clicking tongues, advanced or withdrawn hands, steepled hands, a high chin (a gravity-defying tell) and even the manner in which certain players “splash” a pot with their chips are among the behaviors studied here. Included in these sections are plenty of photographic examples, showing readers exactly how visual (though often very brief) these subliminal behaviors can be. Another chapter deals with pacifying behaviors, those motions triggered by the limbic system that players use to calm themselves in moments of high stress.
Are all tells real? Of course not, and no expert book on the topic would be complete without a discussion of fake tells, those acts put on by players trying to deceive others. “Going Hollywood,” as Navarro puts it, kicks off one of the later, more advanced chapters, though Navarro quickly distinguishes between “going Hollywood” or showboating and the more general acting and emission of false tells that are a core strategy of poker. Navarro formalizes it all as “perception management” and takes the topic apart a step at a time, from obvious bluffs by bad players to some of the more subtle cues picked up on only by experts.
Beating those experts, of course, is every player’s dream. Navarro even brings up the topic in one of the final chapters in Read ‘em and Reap, “What You Should Know to Vanquish a Pro,” which is best described as a pep talk; given the high visibility given to big-name pros and the way they play, you’re likely to know more about a given pro than he would about you, should the two of you ever meet at table. That knowledge may partially offset the pro’s perceived skill advantage, says Navarro, and totemizing the pro is giving him an extra advantage he may not really deserve.
There is so much good in Read ‘em and Reap that it’s hard to justice to its content without giving its secrets away. This is a book that a serious poker player simply must buy, read, then return to again and again to refresh its lessons. It’ll be as valuable in 2050 as it is today, making it a sure Poker Essential.
