Phil Hellmuth - Read am and Reap... Join the Nintendo Fun Club Today!

I just read Hellmuth presents Navarro's read and reap, and it was hilarious! First of all, there was some decent advice on possible tells, so its not necessarily a bad book. But what was bad was that over and over and over they kept plugging 'Camp Hellmuth.'

About 20 times in the book the author would remind us why knowing tells is important and thats why, "Camp Hellmuth campers would go out and make significant money at the tables after only an hour of instruction!" It was ridiculous!

Sort of like those books people buy that claim to have 'debt cures' or something and then when you buy the book the only advice it really gives is to buy another book by the same other, or subscribe to a website or something.

Or sort of like in Mike Tyson's Punch Out when your trainer would give you advice on how to beat your opponent, only once you got past the first few all he'd say is, "Join the Nintendo Fun Club Today Mac!"

That's actually pretty common in poker books where the author has other books/videos/websites available: "This is covered in greater detail in Chapter 12 of my book 'How to Kick Ass at Poker!'"

If you read Hellmuth's first book, he pimps Ultimate Bet as the ONLY site worth playing at and crows about how above reproach the company and security are, of course failing to ever mention that he's a part of the site and a paid shill.

What I dont get is why only the camp Hellmuth campers would benifit from attending.. surely the non-camp ones would benifit too.

There's a possible explanation - Joe Navarro isn't actually a poker player, so most of the time he's spent at a poker table has probably been at the camps he lectures at.

Agree that it's shilling for them, but if you ignore that part and focus on the advice itself I think it's the best book out there for NLHE tells.

Wouldn't you be able to easily throw people off with that though? I mean, if I was playing with people whom I felt were focusing on my tells, wouldn't you do exactly the OPPOSITE of what they were expecting? Every time I got a favorable flop I'd freeze like I was crapping my pants or something. You know?

That's one of the things that any book will tell you about tells, is that you have to watch out for the false ones and use them as a part of the overall picture when making a poker decision, not as the sole deciding factor. If you start throwing your money into the pot every time you see a guy touch his face or move his adam's apple, you're going to get abused!

*shrugs*

Maybe. Try it some time - it's much, much easier said than done.

The problem here is that tells are not that easy to learn.

I realise the adams apple and face touching were just cursory examples.. but lets use them anyway just for clarity.

A guy touches his adams apple.. what does that actually mean?
The guy next to him does exactly the same thing.. does it mean the same thing?

Thats the basic problem with tells, the same physical action can mean anything.. its very person specific. There are a few which are more reliable than most.. but in general you cannot learn tells by looking at a persons actions.

True tells exist.. but they are so person specific that they are difficult to teach or to learn. Tells exist because under conditions of stress, things like adrenaline in the body increase.. it makes people a little more 'twitchy' than usual. Persperation may increase a little.. leading to scratching etc etc.

In order to use this kind of infomation.. you have to be extremely good at reading body language because if you are going to bet / fold based on a scratch.. you need to be confidant that you can read it for what it is... you also have to know how often that guy scratches normally.. and why this particular scratch is different.

Its not impossible.. but its very hard!!

Reverse tells.. or faking tells.. it can be done.. but consider this.

Firstly if you intend to do this as part of a bluff.. you need to be very sure that your opponent picks up on it and that he interperates it in the way that you intended... against weaker opponents who have just cottoned onto this tell thing.. it may work.

Against people who can read tells it not only wont work.. you will also be telling them what you have. Think of it like this. You are sat in the pub and the guy next to you knocks your wallet off the table. Does he intend to steal it? There is something about someones actions that are different when its unconcious to when its planned.. its really hard to explain what it is because the action is the same... but you often know when a movement is planned and when it isnt.

So the kind of person who could reliably interperate your tell the way you intended, is also the kind of person who could spot a fake one.

The guy who falls for the fake one.. may or may not actualy interperate it in the right way because his reading abilities are poor anyway.

There are always ecxeptions to things but I think the above holds true most of the time.