Reading Poker Tells

by Zachary Elwood

Reading Poker Tells will teach you how a professional poker player analyzes the facial expressions, body posture, physical gestures, and verbal statements of his opponents. Besides cataloging the meaning of the most common poker tells, this book gives an organizational framework for thinking about and remembering tells. It also contains information on general poker psychology, methods of deceiving and manipulating opponents, and methods for becoming "unreadable". Released in 2012, it has been widely recognized by many poker players, both amateur and experienced, as being the best work on the subject. The author, Zachary Elwood, keeps a blog at www.readingpokertells.com.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction

184 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 1, 2012

Reviews

[Rich Miner]

I have read nearly every poker book written in the last 50 years & this book Reading Poker
Tells by Zachary Elwood is in a class along with Super System by Doyle Brunson.
If you are a poker player this book will help you earn $1000s more than you are now. if you are just learning poker get this book & start winning, a good number of professional poker players have read it and recommend & rated it among 5 stars as I have.Reading Poker Tells

[willow]

Incredibly interesting! And that’s coming from a person who has never played a single game of poker. I’ve always wondered how poker players could read people and now I am really glad to have my question answered. As someone who doesn’t even have the intention of playing the game I can’t believe that I didn’t lose interest throughout reading it, but there is simply lots of interesting insight on human psychology and it’s impassible to do so. Very happy I picked it up! I am sure I’ll find use out of it.

[TOETU MOAMOA SAGIA]

Great Value.

I was able to fix some of the leaks of my game while reading this book, and able to read bad players and their tendencies. I am mad that I just now discovered this book because my rate would’ve been better and I wouldn’t have lost a lot. A MUST read for live players.

[Aaron Cherniavsky]

Sick book. Made a call I never would have otherwise based on 3 tells he gave.

Zachary actually gave me a copy of his transcript before publishing it on 2+2 forums back in 2010ish.

Should have read it then honestly...

[Keith Maynard]

Made me more aware of my opponents and their habits.

[Abhishek Singh]

About as effective as I assumed (little), though credit to writer for trying to pull very diverse and practical subject into theory and principle. The structure and flow will keep you hooked.

[Cameron]

Excellent book on interpretating and reading poker tells!

[John Cook]

Excellent book

I found this book useful in a number of ways, from picking up reads on my opponents to noticing my own tells.
I like the fact that the author does not try to sell tells as a miracle for getting rich playing poker. instead he gives honest advice on the subject while reminding the reader that this is just one facet of a very complex game.
the layout of the book is also well done though there is quite a bit of flipping back and forth, that is a product of the topic rather than a writing issue.
I especially like the way the author goes into detail to explain the logic behind each tell as well as other authors arguments on the subject.

[Eddy]

So obviously I think this is a great book, but to be fair to myself, the truth is that I struggle with tells. My short term memory in poker is often that of a goldfish and in poker you really need a sharp memory to get to the top. So whilst I find the info in this book invaluable, I struggle to implement it and find it difficult to put into practice in an easy 1 2 3 step method.

[Iyad Atuan]

I have to admit i was a skeptic about reading this book as the author is an unknown poker player so wasn't sure what insight he had. I was surprised about the description of the tells as I experienced some at the tables. Others I wasnt even aware of but next time I was playing poker observed for them and found them to be profitable.

[Rob]

I don't play live poker as regularly as I used to, but Zach's approach and examples combine to offer something for live players of various skill levels to understand and work on during their next game.

[t]

oldschool online player gone livepro here. this books doubled my winrate!

Edit: rereading this after logging a bunch of hours and realizing I need to pay way more attn to these tells. Book is so good

[Eugene Tung]

I like the way the author breaks down tells into before, during and post-bet. Gives a more organised and systematic way of analysing tells.

[Kevin]

Not that useful. His verbal poker tells book was better because of all the real-life/real-play examples.

[Liquidlasagna]

Malmuth rates this one about an 10

[Steve]

This didnt teach me anything. Waste of time.