A friend of mine told me I should have a dramatic hand to start the book with, to show an example of using tells in practice, and to get people's attention. I thought it was a good idea. I have a bunch of notes of hands I've played from a long time ago, and I thought the hand I finally decided on was a good one. This is from a hand I played in 2005 in Albuquerque, NM. Names have been changed to ...
Decision fatigue in poker
I read an article in the NY Times called 'Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue'. It was about a series of studies that showed that making decisions wears you out mentally. People who face a series of decisions will be increasingly worn out until they reach a point where they are not making their best decisions, and will effectively not care as much about the outcome of their decisions. It also ...
Most ridiculous poker hand ever televised
You will enjoy this if you haven't seen it already. It's from a Spanish televised poker tournament where one guy accidentally flips his cards up and plays heads-up against a player who flops a set. See if you can count the number of pure fundamental mistakes made by both these players. It is poker comedy at its best. No, the games aren't dead and will never be dead. ...
Great live poker advice from Limon
Limon is the twoplustwo.com handle of a high-stakes no-limit player who lives in Los Angeles. He's been playing professionally for 10 years at places like the Commerce. In 2009, he started a thread in the High Stakes NL forum with a bunch of his thoughts on the game. That thread has stayed near the top of the forum for the last two years, and Limon has continually revisited it to answer questions, ...
Immediate calls and raises, and talking a lot after betting
On the Pokerstars Big Game (season 1, week 2, ep. 3) there's a hand where Daniel Negreanu has the nut straight on the turn, and the millionaire/amateur poker player Jason Calacanis turns a set and fills up on the river. Calacanis shows some common tells. For one, he's super-talkative with a big hand. Also important are his immediate calls and bets, which give away a lot of info. ...
New poker tells book almost done
The book is getting close to being done. It’s working title is currently ‘Reading Poker Tells’. Maybe I’ll throw on a secondary subtitle; something like, "and other psychological tools". I’ve sent out the current version of the manuscript to several poker friends for comments, and I’m awaiting their reviews. The main thing I want to do is to communicate the concepts in a simple, easy-to-understand ...
Plugging a no-limit leak
I don’t usually talk about strategy too much on here, because this blog is about poker tells, not about poker strategy. There are much better blogs and forums to read about strategy in. I also don’t claim to be a great poker strategist, so consider yourself forewarned. I’m writing this for my own self-interest; to plug a leak I’ve been noticing in my no-limit game. I’ve noticed that when I’m ...
Bluffing and hand tension
At the last NLHE game I played ($5-10 at Parx Casino outside Phillie), there was a reliable tell that influenced one of my decisions. This one has to do with hand tension when a player was bluffing versus when he was value-betting. ...
Pre-flop looking-at-hole-cards tell
In the most recent session I played (Parx Casino $5-10 NLHE), there were a couple hands where tells came into play. In this post and the next, I’ll talk about a couple physical tells I spotted that influenced the way I played my hand. The tell in this post involves the length of time a pre-flop raiser would look at his hole cards. ...
Parx Casino $5-10 NLHE Trip Report
I got a chance to play an 8-hour $5-10 NL session at Parx Casino, outside of Philadelphia, PA. The cardroom was very nice; they have 64 tables, and the place seems well-run and is pleasant to be in. They only had one $5-10 NLHE game, but had several $2-5 games and a bunch of $1-2 games. They also had a couple $15-30 limit games going on, so the action was decent. Probably the coolest thing ...