I recently appeared on Steve Barton's Heads-up Poker Podcast, talking about tells in a 2018 Big One for One Drop hand. The hand was submitted by a listener to that podcast, and I was glad they submitted it because I haven't been watching much WSOP coverage this summer and I might have missed it otherwise. The hand features a pre-flop shove from millionaire Rick Salomon (also known as the guy ...
Charlie Carrel talks about tells in a One Drop hand
Recently, on the poker podcast The Chip Race, with hosts Dara O'Kearney and David Lappin, poker player Charlie Carrel talked about a hand he played in the 2017 WSOP Europe One Drop $111K buy-in event. This hand involved some exploitative live reads Charlie made. The full audio of that podcast episode can be found on Youtube (also here's an iTunes link to the podcast episodes). You can follow The ...
WSOP Main Event verbal tell of strength
The hand in question occurred when the final table was 7-handed. The behavior is from Scott Blumstein, the eventual winner of the event. To see the hand history, see Hand #101 in this PokerNews article. Long story short: Blumstein had a turned full house and bet the river vs. Pollak. Pollak started talked and smiling and said, "Sick turn" and "What are you on, Scott? Speak!" Blumstein ...
2017 WSOP $10K PLO winner talks about opponent behavior/tells
Tommy Le, winner of the 2017 WSOP $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha event, talked about his opponent's behavior in a pivotal hand where he had a set of Kings and folded to a raise on the flop. I transcribed this hand from www.PokerGo.com, where you can subscribe month-to-month to watch poker events and footage, including WSOP events. Also thanks to poker player Skip Parker for sending me an email drawing my ...
WSOP prep: Some poker tells from the World Series of Poker
It's World Series of Poker time, and I know many people are making the trek to Vegas right now or very soon. I thought I'd throw together a few fun hands from the WSOP that feature some generally reliable poker tells. In this email, I've got the following hand histories. These are all taken from my new Exploiting Poker Tells book (ebook available here, paperback available on Amazon). Will ...
Analysis of Will Kassouf’s “speech play” in 2016 WSOP Main Event
If you’ve been watching the World Series of Poker Main Event episodes this year (2016), you probably know who Will Kassouf is. He’s a talkative player who got a lot of coverage due to his constant chatter in hands. Not since Jamie Gold has a WSOP inspired such attention, and created such controversy, for his during-hand yapping. I've got a few pieces of content analyzing Kassouf's patterns and I'm ...
WSOP mention & early-hand ostentatious behavior
I got a few texts from friends the other night, telling me I’d gotten another shout-out from Norman Chad on the latest WSOP episode. Here’s the clip below; the hand starts at 29:30: Dan Smith goes to raise with Qc 9c and drops a chip. He smiles sheepishly and says emphatically, "Terrible omen; I'm going to make it 90 thousand anyway." He then slams down his chips in an exaggerated ...
Analysis of Sylvain Loosli’s potential poker tells in 2013 WSOP Main Event
In this post, I’m going to describe my analysis of Sylvain Loosli that I did prior to and during the 2013 WSOP Main Event final table. I had been hired by Amir Lehavot to analyze his opponents and himself for possible behavioral leaks. The point of this post is not just to talk about how I went about trying to find patterns in Loosli and what those patterns may have been, it’s also to talk about ...
Analyzing poker tells for Amir Lehavot at the 2013 WSOP Main Event
A couple weeks before the WSOP Main Event final table, I got an email from Amir Lehavot (founder of PokerWit.com and 3rd in this year's WSOP ME), asking if I’d be interested in helping him prepare for the final table. After discussing what I might be able to do to help him, and making sure we had similar expectations, I agreed. My role was to analyze existing footage of his opponents for possible ...
Reading Poker Tells book mentioned in 2013 WSOP
This year, during the World Series of Poker Main Event broadcast, my book Reading Poker Tells got a shout-out from Norman Chad. Here's the clip; go to the 1hr1m point if it doesn't automatically take you there. I'd sent a copy of Reading Poker Tells to Norman a few months ago, but I've sent out so many books over the past year to people (roughly $4,000 worth!) and haven't heard back from ...
2011 WSOP: Martin Staszko’s (Possible) Poker Tells
I’ve been reviewing the 2011 WSOP Final Table footage of Staszko and Heinz, trying to pick up some patterns in Staszko’s body language. I haven’t been too successful. The main thing that got in the way of analyzing his body language patterns was that Staszko just didn’t bluff very much. In order to analyze someone’s tells you need to see how they act when they’re putting out a significant bluff ...
Another example of Pius Heinz avoiding eye contact with a big hand
(Apologies: apparently the YouTube video I was linking to for this post has been removed. I will work on trying to find another video and edit this post.) I was reviewing some WSOP footage and saw another very good example of Pius Heinz avoiding eye contact when he hits a big hand. This was the tell I talked about in my last WSOP-related post. This is pre-November-9, when they were nearing the ...
Poker tells at 2011 WSOP Final Table: Pius Heinz’ eye-contact tell
(Apologies; it looks like the YouTube video I linked to for this post and the following post has been removed. I will try to remedy this in the future.) This post is about the most significant poker tell that I saw at the Final Table of the 2011 WSOP NLHE Main Event. It involves Pius Heinz and the amount of eye contact he would make with his opponent in different situations. In a nutshell, Heinz' ...
Situations where poker tells are most important
I noticed a few poker tells I thought were significant in the 2011 WSOP Main Event final table, and I’ll be talking about them for the next couple blog posts. But for the most part, the tells were very few and far between. There were only a handful of moments in the play between the final four players (Heinz, Lamb, Staszko, and Giannetti) where I thought someone’s body language was giving away ...
2011 WSOP ME final table = great poker television
This year’s World Series of Poker Main Event final table was just great poker television. I haven’t been interested in watching televised tournaments for a long time, just because it’s usually so boring. I hate watching tournaments that have been edited, because you don’t get the game flow and they usually choose the most boring all-in situations to show. I also hate seeing the hole cards in ...
Acting weak when strong, starring Matt Damon
We'll look at a video of Matt Damon flopping a full house in the 2009 WSOP (starts at 2 minutes). Damon exhibits a few behaviors that are fairly common from recreational players with huge hands who want people to think they're weak. ...