Book ‘Read’em and Reap’ tells all on ‘tells’

By Mark Lasser

I’ve been having fun this summer catching up on my poker book reading. Some folks get more reading done during the cold months of our Colorado winter, but I like to sit outside with a cigar and a drink, work on my tan and read like crazy.

A few weeks ago I had former FBI investigator and poker tell guru Joe Navarro on my radio show. I’ve known about Joe for awhile and had seen him appear on ESPN during the World Series of Poker, but I had never actually read his books nor had an opportunity to meet him. Joe’s a fascinating guy and found a great niche when he appeared on a show for the Discovery Channel with Annie Duke who eventually introduced him to Phil Hellmuth.

Picking up a copy of “Read’em and Reap” ($18.99; $11.99 Kindle version) was long overdue, so I started in this week and finished it in two readings. Joe’s writing style is very conversational, making it an easy read and also allowing you to focus on the content supported by many photographs of the tells he describes.

While many poker books are geared toward a novice or an advanced player, this book is good for pretty much anyone and has applications beyond just poker. In one sidebar, Joe tells a story of trying to buy a new car and picking up on tells from the salesperson indicating there was more room to negotiate pricing. The observation saved him over $1,000.

Poker tells, in case you aren’t already familiar with the term, are the little involuntary things players do that give away information about the relative strength or weakness they perceive in their hand and their betting. In the movie “Rounders,” we saw Matt Damon pick up on a tell by John Malkovich as he would twist open and eat Oreo cookies when he held monster hands, but he wouldn’t twist them open when he was bluffing.

In the real world, tells usually aren’t quite so obvious, although sometimes they are. Navarro starts by trying to get players to be self-aware, and he encourages players at the very least to stop giving off obvious tells. He divides non-verbal behaviors into those that are massively involuntary and those that we can control to some degree; the latter being more impulses and the former being so hard wired that we cannot control them without training.

An example of a tell that can’t really be controlled is the dilation of one’s pupils when cards are good and the constriction when cards are bad. This is a why many players wear sunglasses when they play cards. Shades also help disguise who or where a player is looking when others are trying to pick up information.

Other chapters are dedicated to territorial tells, facial tells and hand tells. In what may be a huge surprise, Navarro describes the most honest part of the body. I’m not going to give that away other than to say, it’s not the face!

One interesting conversation Joe and I had was about the tells professionals give off. As we continue to watch the coverage of the WSOP main event. It’s fun to see what we can pick up from the players at the tables. Navarro claims Negreanu’s forehead gives off tells like crazy and that Doyle Brunson and Chris “Jesus” Ferguson are some of the toughest to read. I noticed in the hand that got Hellmuth knocked out that he licked his lips before deciding to make a bad call that knocked him out. That tell is specifically mentioned in this book. So, should you buy this and read this? You bet. It’s a small investment that should reap immediate dividends.

- Mark B. Lasser is Denver writer and international poker player. He regularly plays in Colorado, Arizona, California, Missouri and Nevada. You can hear him talk about gambling and casinos every Friday at 5 PM on KEZW AM 1430. Readers can send questions and comments to him at ColoradoPokerMark@comcast.net.