Reviewing Zachary Elwood’s Verbal Poker Tells

I mentioned earlier this week how I’d been reading Zachary Elwood’s Verbal Poker Tells, the follow-up to his earlier Reading Poker Tells. I was able to finish it and wrote a review for Learn.PokerNews, posted today.

I had to mention in my review how the topic Zach chose could seem to be a “niche within a niche within a niche,” although as it turns out the book has a lot of value that goes beyond the narrow scope of verbal tells. I believe anyone reading the book will come away not just with added knowledge about how to decipher opponents’ table talk, but also further equipped to understand many commonly employed approaches to hold’em strategy.

Zach does a nice job in his explanations of all the different kinds of statements about hand strength, misdirections, defensive statements, attempts at manipulation, and other verbal patterns connecting the words players use to the strategies they are employing when playing a hand.

I especially enjoyed the many, many hands discussed in Verbal Poker Tells, including a lot from televised poker that I remembered seeing before. There’s a much greater emphasis on hand histories in this book than was the case with Zach’s earlier one, which makes sense as all of the direct quotes help provide concrete illustrations of the many varieties of tells he’s addressing.

He also does well (as he did in the first book) to distinguish how recreational players tend to exhibit these tells more readily and less subtly than is the case with more seasoned table talkers. And again he makes it clear with several disclaimers that recognizing tells is only a small part of live poker, with an understanding of fundamental strategy more important (and, of course, necessary to have before even being able to think about tells).

I admire Zach for the obvious commitment of time and energy to this new project, and for getting his book completed and now made available for readers. It’s quite an achievement.

Whenever I write a book review I have misgivings about what I wasn’t able to cover in the space of the review. Such is true again with this one, although I’m hoping to interview Zach next week and thus have a chance to add further to the discussion of how Verbal Poker Tells contributes to our understanding of both tells specifically and poker strategy more broadly. Stay tuned over at Learn.PokerNews for that.

Meanwhile, check out the review for more. And enjoy the weekend!

T-Shirt Talk

There has been an abundance of talk of late about poker players showing up at televised final tables wearing t-shirts with political slogans and the appropriateness of such. If you saw the €50,000 Super High Roller final table play out at EPT11 Barcelona last week and/or have read any of the several articles, blog posts, and Twitterings resulting from it, you know where all of that started.

The discussion has moved around to touch on a number of different topics. Some believe players should be allowed to wear whatever they like at the tables, including being able to seize the opportunity of earning some extra exposure on a televised table to deliver messages such as we saw last week. Others maintain those hosting and televising such tables should be able to exert some control over what players wear when appearing on their shows, including not permitting political slogans.

Some of the talk has even stepped back to consider whether or not there is “room” for politics in poker -- i.e., to entertain the idea that the poker table perhaps should represent a kind of safe haven where one shouldn’t have to confront various conflicts existing elsewhere, including political ones.

Of course, many poker players readily choose to shut out the world (so to speak) while playing, immersing themselves in the game entirely. That phenomenon always makes me think of the story Al Alvarez tells in The Biggest Game in Town about being in Las Vegas during the 1981 WSOP when Pope John Paul II was shot in St. Peter’s Square. “Nobody mentioned it,” notes Alvarez, “despite the innumerable crucifixes dangling from the necks of both the players and the casino staff.”

Such is true not just of poker, but in much of contemporary culture where many would rather focus on awards shows, sporting events, or Facebook than the news of the day, particularly if that news is unpleasant or makes one uncomfortable. (I’m certainly not claiming to be innocent of that escapist impulse, either.)

I was trying to decide if I had anything original to contribute to the discussion of this issue, or if by writing a post about it I’d just be adding more noise to bounce around the echo chamber. A thought then occurred to me that I haven’t necessarily seen others mention, so I’m sharing it here.

I mentioned yesterday how I’m reading Zach Elwood’s Verbal Poker Tells. He has a chapter early on titled “Deception and Truth-Telling” that focuses primarily on players’ statements about hand-strength. Zach maintains that most of these statements are indirect rather than straightforward. That is to say, when players do talk about the strength of their hands, they usually do so in ways that require interpretation. For example, instead of saying “I have the nuts,” a player will more likely say “I have a big hand” or something even more ambiguous like “If you fold, I’ll show.”

The primary reason why direct statements are relatively rare, says Zach, “is that poker is a game that assumes non-cooperation and deception from opponents. Because deception is assumed, there isn’t much value in making direct hand-strength statements, whether true or false, because opponents assume you are trying to deceive them.”

Whatever your experience or belief regarding players’ statements about hand strength might be, I think most would agree with this characterization of the poker table as a place where “deception is assumed.” Most would likely also agree with the contrast Zach draws between the poker table and “‘real-life’ situations -- like social and professional interactions -- [where] truth-telling is assumed and is considered the ‘proper’ behavior.”

Reading this passage made me think back to all of the t-shirt talk. Since the poker table is a place where “deception is assumed,” that perhaps makes it all the more strange as a context for earnest declarations about “real-life” causes. I’m not saying we don’t believe the player wearing such a shirt is a sincere advocate for the position or claim its slogan represents. But there is a kind of dissonance there, I think, given the context of a poker game.

After all, the poker table is the one place where we are always having to ask each other “Are you for real?”

Feeding and Reading

Another nice day on the farm here. I was just doing barn chores. Every weekday afternoon about this time I am usually found in the barn cleaning stalls and feeding the three horses we’re keeping. Two are ours -- Sammy and Maggie -- while we’re boarding another, Shakan. All are now munching their feed and hay happily once more, an indication of a job well performed. Or at least that’s how I’m reading it.

Soon they’ll be turned out for the night. That above is a picture of Sammy (brown) and Maggie (black), shortly after getting turned out the other day.

Like most who follow poker, I had the EPTLive stream on for much of the day to watch the coverage from Day 4 of the €5,300 Main Event in Barcelona. They just finished up a few minutes ago, with 25 players making it through to night’s end, survivors of that record 1,496-entry field.

I didn’t closely follow what has been happening in the €10,300 High Roller event which started today, although I did hear the reports of how that field, too, had ballooned to record proportions. That one is already up over the 370-entry mark, with late registration (and the ability to reenter) open until the start of tomorrow’s Day 2.

At one point during the afternoon Daniel Negreanu joined in for some commentary, as usual adding both insight and entertainment with his contributions. Interestingly he’s skipping that record-breaking High Roller to explore some sights in Barcelona tonight and tomorrow. It’s a good call, I’d say, to take a break once in a while and not play all the events, even if Negreanu is a player who certainly could do so if he wished. Fits with his overall message as well to poker players to keep their lives balanced with other non-poker activities.

One theme that emerged during Negreanu’s time in the booth was how slow players were to act, something that happens a lot more at the feature tables, I think, than is the case out from under the lights and cameras. During one hand Negreanu was pointing out how among the items the player might be considering, the search for his opponent’s tells was especially futile. The fellow was stone-faced and motionless, and as Negreanu noted there was just nothing there to observe.

I’ve been thinking about tells lately in part because I’m nearly finished with Zach Elwood’s latest, Verbal Poker Tells, which catalogues and examines lots of different kinds of table talk in an accessible and entertaining way. (I’ll be reviewing the book soon over on Learn.PokerNews.)

As I’ve been reading, I found myself inspired occasionally to share some of Zach’s observations with Vera along the way. After one instance of doing so the conversation moved on to how animals -- specifically the horses -- communicate with us by their actions, movements, and even their “verbal” snorts and whinnies.

I was thinking of that conversation again this afternoon while in Sammy’s stall and he gave me a playful nudge on the shoulder, rubbing his nose back and forth before turning back around and sticking his head back out of the stall window to enjoy an unusually crisp August afternoon.

It was an unmistakably friendly message. Or at least that’s how I’m reading it.

Obvious Tells Are Obvious

I think some of you have probably seen this already, but I wanted to share it here for those who hadn’t -- a recent post by Reading Poker Tells author Zach Elwood for the popular site Deadspin called “Five of the Most Obvious Poker Tells Ever Televised.”

It’s a cool article for a number of reasons, including the fact that Zach includes YouTube clips of the hands to go along with his commentary explaining the tells on display. I also dig the inclusion of an Oreo cookie in the accompanying illustration which is even funnier when you realize Zach doesn’t even talk about Teddy KGB in the piece.

All five of the featured hands kind of fit in a similar category filled by players with huge holdings trying to mask their strength. But Zach does a neat job with each hand breaking down the different kinds of behaviors being demonstrated, adding a useful caveat that while the tells in the clips are all fairly obvious, many “are seen in much more subtle forms in more experienced players.”

I’ll let you click through to enjoy the clips and the analyses yourself, but I wanted also to mention how I like the way Zach begins the article.

Writing for the wide audience that reads Deadspin, Zach starts out noting the fact that “the poker tell is one of the most romanticized ideas in gambling.” He then points out how “in reality” tells often work differently -- “usually more subtle than they are in the movies.”

That distinction between a romantic version of poker (such as is often presented in film) and a realistic one is something I find myself going back to time and again in my “Poker in American Film and Culture” class.

We watch a lot of clips in the class and thus see over and over again what Zach is talking about with regard to the exaggerated tells. But we also address the same romance-versus-reality debate in a number of other contexts, too, such as when we read Al Alvarez’s The Biggest Game in Town and talk about the difference as representing different approaches to the game.

That’s a discussion I’ve had here before amid a long exegesis of one chapter of Alvarez’s book, if you’re curious.

Save reading my old post for later, though, and go enjoy Zach’s new one now if you haven’t already.

More Stories to Share

Have a busy week coming up here, one which will involve me getting out of the house, to the airport, and down to Florida for a quick trip to the World Poker Tour bestbet Jacksonville Fall Scramble that begins on Thursday. That’s a $3,500 buy-in event with a $500K guarantee that’ll probably bring out a decent-sized crowd.

Today I wanted to direct your attention to a few new items over on the Learn.PokerNews site where we are starting to involve more contributors and have a greater variety of content.

Josh Cahlik has been penning some interesting pieces lately, including “A Beginner’s Guide to Selling Tournament Action” (a good initial primer) and one called “Play and Learn: Exploiting a Tight Image” which details some of what he experienced during his deep run in that Casino Employees Event last summer.

I found myself thinking further about Ryan Riess’s post-WSOP Main Event comment about being “the best player in the world” and decided I had more to say about it after posting some thoughts here last week. In something called “On the Champ Saying He’s ‘the Best Player in the World’,” I talked about how it maybe isn’t such a bad thing for the WSOP ME winner to be emphasizing how skill played a role in his win, especially when considering how the tournament -- and poker in general -- plays to the larger, mainstream audience.

Finally, I most wanted to draw your attention to a piece provided today by Zachary Elwood, author of Reading Poker Tells. He offered some sound “Poker Tell Advice for Beginning Poker Players” that highlights the need to worry more about your own tells (and trying to minimize them) as opposed to searching your opponents for tells.

Elwood, you might know, was called on by Amir Lehavot during his preparations for the November Nine, something Elwood wrote about on his blog last week. As part of that work, he also did a lot of study of other players at the WSOP Main Event final table, and today offered a lengthy breakdown of some of his ideas regarding fourth-place finisher Sylvain Loosli, if you’re curious.

The Learn site has gotten me thinking a lot lately about my own learning of the game, including the sorts of content I loved reading and listening to and watching as my interest and knowledge grew.

For a lot of us those days are long gone, or at least the newness of the game has receded into the past. But the learning obviously has not, and I think that is a big reason why the game continues to interest me. The stories players tell about their experiences remain interesting, too, and always seem to contain something not only new and entertaining, but instructive, too.

That was always the most fun way to learn anything, I think... via stories in which some lesson or idea was conveyed in an pleasurable way.

2013 WSOP, Day 35: Talking Tells

Was a quiet, restful day for your humble scribbler yesterday as I enjoyed what might be a final day off before the last big push through these next couple of weeks helping PokerNews with the coverage of the 2013 World Series of Poker.

As I mentioned yesterday, I did indeed make it a priority to fill the rental’s tank with gas. Actually took a couple of visits to Terrible’s as the lot was too packed with cars on the first try and I did not relish sitting in the heat for even 10 minutes to wait for an open spot. But I did fill the tank, probably for the last time until I head back to the airport in a couple of weeks. And after sleeping late both yesterday and this morning, I feel more or less replenished energy-wise, too.

I did make it to the Rio briefly yesterday, although didn’t look in on any of the poker happening. Following the reports I saw that the $50K played all of the way down to 26 players, meaning the tension is rising considerably there as only the top 16 get paid. Doyle Brunson was among those eliminated on Day 3, and was tweeting a short while ago that he felt he’d only brought his “B” game to the event.

Noticed as well that a woman other than Vanessa Selbst won the first bracelet in an open event in six years as Dana Castaneda won Event No. 54, another of the $1,000 NLHE events.

Several women have made final tables this summer, and while I don’t have current numbers I know that WSOP Communications Director Seth Palansky tweeted a week-and-a-half ago that women made up 4.1% of the entrants through the first 39 events. That would represent an increase in women participating from recent years. For instance, I see in a post I wrote during the summer of 2011 the percentage was about 3.2% through the first 29 events.

I imagine Castaneda’s win won’t hurt that upward trend. Incidentally, there were two women among the 132 who played the $50K Poker Players’ Championship, Jennifer Harman and Vanessa Selbst. Selbst busted Day 1, while Harman got knocked out yesterday along with Tex Dolly.

Like I say, though, while I was at the Rio briefly, it wasn’t to follow any poker. Rather I was there to visit with Reading Poker Tells author Zach Elwood (@apokerplayer on Twitter) over a mid-afternoon lunch. I reviewed his book a while back on Betfair Poker and have mentioned it here from time to time. Like many who have read it, I found it especially insightful and well presented, and am liking hearing other good reviews of it since I wrote mine.

Zach has been in town for a few weeks playing some events and in the cash games while promoting his book. He’s done really well, in my opinion, when it comes to making those who would be most interested in his book aware of it.

Among our topics of conversation was the relative importance of tells in poker, something which I think Elwood addresses well in his book when he points out that “tell-reading is only a small part of playing great live poker.”

I mentioned how when I played that Golden Nugget event a couple of weeks back I couldn’t honestly remember any instances where my decisions were affected by having noticed an opponent’s tell, and that more often I was thinking of others’ betting patterns. He made a great point that when it comes to tells there is a big difference between tourneys and cash games, namely, that in tourneys many players are less likely to reveal them.

He also shared a neat story with me about interacting some with Bill Perkins over recent months, including recently during Perkins’s deep run in the “One Drop High Rollers” event where he finished third.

Zach had analyzed some earlier video of Perkins from High Stakes Poker and the two had gotten in touch afterwards. Edwards has probably improved as a player in several ways over the last couple of years, and while I didn’t get a chance to see any of the tournament last week, I don’t think it is too farfetched to say he might have benefited from Zach’s analysis and advice, perhaps in a hand or three.

After we parted, I joked on Twitter that while I enjoyed our meeting, I didn’t want to say more and give away any “post-meal tells” (an allusion to Zach’s “post-bet tells” category). “I soul read you for IBS” he replied. (I am glad to report his read of my gastrointestinal system was incorrect.)

Will be back over there later this afternoon for Day 1 of the $2,500 2-7 Triple Draw (Event No. 59). Having memories of one of my favorite events I ever covered at the WSOP way back in 2008 when F-Train and I were on this same event. John Phan won it and David Sklansky took sixth, and a couple of months afterward I wrote a post here about the contrasting styles of those two.

As always, head over to PokerNews to follow along.

HBP Home Games Season 2 Continues, Books for Top Three

Them football picks went well yesterday. Was 3-for-3, as I did end up going with the Skins in that toss-up versus Dallas.

A tougher slate of games coming up Sunday, though, with nine of the 12 games currently sporting spreads of three points or less. Then Monday night my poor, pitiful Panthers are playing the equally execrable Eagles in what has to be one of the worst MNF match-ups in recent memory. Not to mention another hard game to pick.

Speaking of looking ahead to Sunday, I wanted to report that Season 2 of the Hard-Boiled Poker Home Games at PokerStars is in full swing, with two more tourneys scheduled for Sunday night. This week will be Event Nos. 13 and 14, a six-handed pot-limit Omaha tournament (at 20:00 ET) followed by a H.O.R.S.E. tourney (at 21:00).

As was the case with Season 1, there will be 20 tourneys altogether this season, with everything wrapping up by the end of December. The top three finishers in the league standings will win books which I will be shipping to them. I have three ready to go for prizes. What I thought I’d do is let the first-place finisher pick one, then the second-place finisher select from the other two, with the third-place finisher getting the remaining one.

One of the books is the great Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling (2006) written by David G. Schwartz who heads the Center for Gaming Research over at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. It’s a nice hardback copy donated to the cause by our friend and occasional HBP HG player Mike Fasso.

Another is Zach Elwood’s Reading Poker Tells which the author himself donated as a prize. I reviewed Elwood’s book for Betfair Poker a while back, and many others have chimed in on the web and on Twitter regarding how useful the book is for identifying and understanding tells at the table.

Finally, I have a copy of Byron Jacobs’s 2011 strategy book Think Like a Poker Pro to give as a prize. I have to admit that I haven’t read all of it, but what I’ve read seems good and the book did get some praise here and there on the forums, in particular for its limit hold’em advice. It comes with a three-hour video CD, too.

(By the way, if anyone out there would like to donate poker and/or gambling books for me to give as prizes in future seasons of the HBP HG, let me know.)

Anyhow, like I say those finishing in the top three will get to choose which titles they’d like according to their order of finish. Through 12 events, linglemungo is leading the points race with Kevmath second, **GMONEY*722 third, and Season 1 winner thejim2020 currently in fourth.

If you haven’t been playing tourneys in Season 2, there’s still time to collect enough points to move up the leaderboard. See the right-hand column for info about upcoming HBP HG tourneys as well as the club ID/invite code to join my PokerStars Home Game.

Hard-Boiled Poker Home Games Season 1 Concludes Tonight

The first season of the Hard-Boiled Poker Home Games on PokerStars comes to a close tonight with two more tournaments.

At 20:00 ET comes a full ring, no-limit hold’em tourney (Event No. 19), then at 21:00 ET comes an 8-game mixed tourney (Event No. 20).

This makes 10 straight Sunday nights I’ve hosted tournaments, and it has been a ton of fun playing different games and enjoying a little bit of competition at the tables. Even though the tourneys are free to enter (play chips), they’ve been plenty competitive. Usually between 12-15 players are entering each tourney, although there have been several with more players, including one with 24.

With 18 of 20 events completed, the points race is tight, with Grange95 enjoying a slight lead at present thanks in part to his four wins. The next two spots are occupied by thejim2020 and SmBoatDrinks, both of whom could overtake Grange95 tonight, with **GMONEY*72 also having a shot. (There is a look at the current top 10 at left.)

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ll be sending the winner of HBP HG Season 1 a copy of Poker: Bets, Bluffs and Bad Beats by Al Avarez.

I have a late-game surprise to announce, too. Those finishing second and third in the final Season 1 standings will also be receiving prizes, copies of Zach Elwood’s Reading Poker Tells, a book I’ve mentioned here before and reviewed over on the Betfair Poker blog a while time back.

Anyone who’d like to play in the Hard-Boiled Poker Home Games is welcome. The Club ID number is 530631 and the invitation code is noshinola.

Season 2 begins next week and will go from October through December. (I’ll probably end the second season prior to Christmas.) I expect we’ll continue with a similar schedule next week with tourneys every Sunday, although I will probably start scheduling some events during the afternoon so as to make it easier for our European friends to play, too.

There will be prizes as well for top Season 2 performers (stay tuned!). Meanwhile, good luck to all tonight.

Showing Not Telling: ESPN’s “Tells” Segments

ESPN continues its coverage of the 2012 WSOP Main Event tonight. I believe after showing the bubble bursting last week they’ll be showing more highlights from Day 4 this week.

I’ve been watching off and on over the last few weeks. During last Tuesday night’s episode I was noticing some chatter on Twitter from Daniel Negreanu (@RealKidPoker) regarding the “Tells” segment featuring former FBI interrogator and author Joe Navarro, of which Negreanu doesn’t think too highly.

I believe Navarro’s segment is only coming on once per night -- i.e., just a very brief piece (like half a minute) appearing at some point during the two one-hour episodes. If it’s coming more frequently than that, I’ve missed it.

Last week the segment appeared near the end of the second hour following what was really a mundane three-way hand between Vivek Rajkumar, Anthony Scherer, and Patrick Khayat. If you watched the show last week, you might vaguely remember it as the hand during which Norman Chad and Lon McEachearn made a lot of the fact that all three of the players involved had credentials when it came to higher ed (multiple degrees, one went to MIT, etc.).

In the hand, Rajkumar open-raises with , Scherer calls with , and Khayat calls as well from the blinds with . The flop comes , it checks to Rajkumar who bets, Scherer raises, and the others fold. “Scherer may have picked up the pot,” then says McEachern, “but if his opponents were watching, they may have picked up some tells.”

That’s when Navarro comes on to analyze Scherer’s behavior during the hand. He notes Scherer’s “chest heaving,” although doesn’t say what that indicates. He also points out how Scherer grabs his shirt collar and pulls it up over his mouth “using it like a security blanket, almost to hide in the open by grabbing onto something that is soothing for him.” Navarro doesn’t say what that was supposed to mean, either.

In fact, if you go back and look at the hand, what Navarro’s analyzing all happens before the flop, not after. Scherer actually doesn't grab his collar until after the player to his left has acted. This might be to mask his reaction when the flop comes, although Navarro doesn’t suggest that. Then after the flop -- when Scherer raises -- he’s no longer holding his collar at all. (Here's a link that goes to the beginning of the hand, if you’re curious.)

Tells seem to be only marginally meaningful here, relatively speaking. And whatever meaning they might have, Navarro’s commentary isn’t really clarifying much since he doesn’t say anything about Scherer being strong or weak or whatever.

To be honest, when I watched last week I saw the Navarro bit but didn’t really pay much attention to it. But looking back at it, I can see where Negreanu was coming from when he tweeted “Just watched the Navarro segment and have no clue what he is talking about. Security blanket shirts mean what exactly? He’s strong and weak?”

We might cut Navarro a little bit of slack and say the hand that was selected for analysis was hardly a good one for talking about tells. Then again, it’s not like there’s a paucity of hands from which to choose. And as I say, without any conclusions being drawn about the meaning of the tells, it’s hard to know what to do with the observations he’s sharing.

The previous week’s “Tells” segment went similarly, with Navarro talking about Gregory Milliron being stoic and hiding his tells but not connecting that with the hand we just saw or drawing any conclusions regarding the meaning of his behavior. In fact, the segment was really just saying Milliron had no tells to speak of in the hand we were just shown.

While I come at it with a lot less experience and knowledge than Negreanu, I nonetheless share his confusion about what exactly we’re supposed to be getting from these analyses. For those of you who’ve been watching, what are your thoughts about these Navarro “Tells” segments?

By the way, for more intriguing and useful discussion of tells, check out Zachary Elwood’s recent posts about Guy Laliberte’s behavior during various televised appearances, including the Big One for One Drop. He’s put together three intriguing discussions -- two about Laliberte’s body language (Part 1 and Part 2), and another about his bet timing and habit of leaning back in the chair. Lots of interesting (and enlightening) findings tucked in those posts.

Obviously Elwood has more freedom to elaborate on his observations than does Navarro in a short video segment. But still, the Navarro segments’ lack of a conclusion -- his not offering to tell us what the tells mean -- make them much less useful, not to mention a little frustrating.

Or maybe I’m missing something. Could it be that Navarro is telling us what the tells mean, but non-verbally?

(EDIT [added 7 p.m.]: It appears this week ESPN isn't showing the WSOP tonight, but is instead moving the shows to Wednesday, I suppose to compete against the opening of the NFL season [?].)

Rounders’ Game of Tell & Show

Kind of wiped out today thanks to a late night following some of these marathon SCOOP tourneys on PokerStars. Meaning there ain’t a lot in the tank for posting here at the moment. So let me send you over to another blog for an interesting read.

Not long ago I had the chance to read Zach Elwood’s new book Reading Poker Tells and ended up reviewing it over at Betfair. I enjoyed the book quite a bit, which does a neat job categorizing and describing a number of revealing behaviors at the poker tables. Check out my review for a full run down of what the book covers.

Zach also keeps a blog where he posts further on the subject of tells in poker. Over the last few months he’s posted some interesting analyses of the Pius Heinz-Martin Staszko heads-up battle for the 2011 WSOP Main Event bracelet. Those are some interesting reads, especially for those of us who watched that more-than-six-hour heads-up match play out on ESPN last November.

Anyhow, yesterday Zach published a post discussing tells in Rounders, going beyond the one we all remember -- Teddy KGB and his Oreos -- to point out others exhibited by both Teddy and Mike McDermott. Both characters are pretty transparent, really, with regard to their tells, although as Zach points out in his post the characters’ failings in this regard could well be considered part of the film makers’ intentions to convey certain things to the audience, including the non-poker people watching.

Thanks to my “Poker in American Film and Culture” course, I’ve been watching Rounders over and over again for the last few semesters as one of the films I assign to my class. Thus have I become pretty familiar with the tells Zach is describing in his post, as well as some other idiosyncracies in the presentation of poker scenes that may or may not have been intended.

I’m also picking up on other small things with each viewing, such as the neat symmetry between the backstory about Mike and Worm being involved in fixing a basketball game back at prep school and the later scene in the church gym. As back at prep school, Mike agrees one last time to team up with his friend in a plan to make some scratch, although like before things won’t work out.

Anyhow, check out Zach’s analysis of some tells in Rounders. Kind of thing would be neat to do with a lot of poker films, actually, since there is lot of overlap -- potentially -- between the non-verbal types of communication that happens at the poker tables and the language of cinema.