During research for writing the book Verbal Poker Tells, I watched and took notes on around 100 hours of poker footage, with a focus on verbal behavior. Poker footage I watched included: the WSOP Main Events, Poker After Dark, High Stakes Poker, European Poker Tour events, PokerStars’ The Big Game, and the Heartland Poker Tour.
In the book, I used verbatim transcriptions of interesting during-hand speaking from a lot of hands, including from a lot of well-known poker players and celebrity players. I’d say maybe 1/3 of the book is just hand histories, which accounts for it being pretty long (440 pages, almost twice the length of my first book Reading Poker Tells).
Here’s a list of some of the well-known poker players and celebrities whose verbal behavior made it into Verbal Poker Tells:
- Chuck Liddell
- Guy Laliberte
- Matt Damon
- Jason Alexander
- Jennifer Tilly
- Chris Moneymaker
- Jamie Gold
- Phil Hellmuth
- Doyle Brunson
- Greg Raymer
- Roland de Wolfe
- Annette Obrestad
- Shawn Sheikhan
- Antonio Esfandiari
- Gabe Kaplan
- Mike Matusow
- Michael Mizrachi
- Scotty Nguyen
- Brad Booth
- Daniel Negreanu
- Tony G
- Erick Lindgren
- Sam Farha
- Ben Wilinofsky
- Fabrice Soulier
- David “Chino” Rheem
- Scott Seiver
It may seem like I went out of my way to put some non-poker celebrities in the book (for example, I have two hand histories featuring the actor Jason Alexander), but this is actually just kind of naturally due to a few reasons: 1) celebrities are more likely to talk during a hand for the cameras, 2) celebrities are amateur players and are therefore more likely to give away information when they talk during a hand, 3) video producers are more likely to get footage of celebrity players and include them in the final cut.
The book is available in several packages on this site (here); it’s also available on Amazon.