FTR AMA: Zach Elwood, author of Reading Poker Tells - Feb 21st 5.30pm ET
Hey all,
Really pleased to announce another event in the FTR Ask Me Anything series! This time we've got Zachary Elwood, the author of the poker book Reading Poker Tells. I'm actually really excited about this one as the book has been getting incredible reviews.
We've also got some signed copies of Zach's book to give away, details will be announced soon :)
The AMA will take place on February 21st, with Zach logged in between 5.30pm and 7.00 pm ET (10.30pm and 12am GMT). You can either ask questions before or log in live.
Reading a calling station
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Hippy80
Are there any spots where having a tell on a certain type of player doesn't really help? I saw something on your twitter about having reads on a Station doesn't really help, could you explain this?
That was mainly applying to the main types of tells, which are the ones differentiating a player's behavior when bluffing from when he's betting a strong hand. I think there are other tells that come into play (for example, defensive chip handling) for passive players. But many players are never going to make significant bluffs; if you know that about them, it doesn't make much sense to be looking for the kinds of bluff vs. value-bet kinds of tells. I think that was the point I was trying to make.
But yeah, against players who play really passively and obviously, tells are not as useful as they could be. Those types of players make their hands pretty face-up anyway. And against players who call too much, even when they shouldn't, even having a reliable tell that the player doesn't like his hand may not mean much, if he's going to call your bluff anyway.
Like everything in poker, it's all about looking for patterns. Tells aren't going to help you out very often - maybe a few times a session. But when you've found people that have reliable tells - those are profitable players to play against.
False tells vs. real tells
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jaxpaboo
What is the best way(s) to determine if someone is showing you a tell vs someone pretending to have a tell?
If I think someone's clever enough to show me a false tell, I would be tempted to not base decisions on perceived tells. I think it's very important to observe a player's tendencies for a while first; this will help cut down on the chance that a player is fooling you with some one-off false tell.
Also, as Caro points out in his book, if a behavior seems more "on display", then it might be because a player is consciously doing it. Honestly, though, it is pretty rare that I see someone pulling a decent false tell. I recommend in my book against them for several reasons. Good players will just not often get involved doing stuff like that, and it would only be the good players who might do a convincing job of a false tell.
In a lot of cases, a player who thinks he is giving a false tell is actually just giving a tell. For example, a player who's got a very strong hand and decides to suddenly get creative and act like he's weak may be giving away his strength to an observant player, just because whatever act he is putting on is different from his usual behavior he would usually have without a strong hand. So for example, a player who is acting all timid with AA (or whatever he believes faking weakness looks like) appears different than the previous spots where he didn't have AA. If he had been stoic in previous hands and then all of a sudden he's acting in some weird way, his attempt at a false tell has, in this case, become just another tell.
Reading poker tells in life
Quote:
Originally Posted by
TheLongGrind
did you ever use live poker tells to check whether your spouse/friends were lying to you?;)
I think I'm pretty good at reading people's intentions. But that's not really related to my poker tell knowledge; I think I'd be good at that regardless of playing poker. So, basically, no. There are some correlations between general human behavior and behavior at the poker table, but for the most part I think the poker table is a pretty unique arena.
Tells - individualized vs general
Quote:
Originally Posted by
JKDS
To what extent are tells individualized, and to what extent are they applicable to all players? (For simplicity, assume no one is acting?)
There are many types of tells that apply to a wide population. Those are the ones I go into in the book; a lot of them are already known by many people, although I think I've added to the general knowledge a bit with some that I've never seen written about before.
But I also think you need to first observe a player and see if they are giving off those common tells. Even though everyone is indeed different, the benefit of having an internal catalogue of common behavior lets you more easily and quickly check a player for that behavior, to see if they have those types of tells. If they don't, you can stop studying them and concentrate on something else. If they seem to have imbalanced behavior, then keep studying them and see where the imbalance is coming from.
So while everyone is different, many people will have a common tell or two, or three.