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A player had hit the full house and his legs started bouncing like crazy, he was screaming with his legs that he had the nuts. Joe Navarro's book is truly an eye opening experience for any poker player, at least it should be. I read Joe's book prior to a World Series of Poker Circuit Event and it helped me get to 33rd in a tournament of 573. It's definitely worth the read.
They give away their intentions, if you know what to look for. I do now. It's not some system, it is real life and observing how people act and react. He knows what he is talking about and it works.
Poker players have tells, whether they think they do or not and they are on display. Again, I am a seasoned player and this single read helped me tremendously. I am a seasoned tournament poker player. I cannot recommend this book enough, but then again, I hope you don't read it so I can get the best of you at the next tournament.
One of my favorite and easy tells to spot is "Happy Feet" and I saw it at the tournament. If you read the book, which is an easy read, you will see exactly what he is talking about. Joe points them out in detail and they are easy to spot.
I bought this book a while ago when I was playing several times a week.This book not only helped me greatly at the poker table where I was able to read players actions as if they were playing with their cards face up for me to see.But it helped me at work where I am in corrections I was able to tell if I was being lied to by an inmate during an incident interview or if something was in the works by the way they held their bodies while I was present.I really need to read this again there is a lot of great material in here that made me want to learn more about human behavior on this level.Im not a WSOP champion but the knowledge I have gained through this book and others like it always lead to the same thing.Cant play against him he always knows what I have.
Caro's book was ground breaking at the time of it's release but that time was 20 years ago. A lot of poker books use a serif typeface, to make it look more intelligent.
This book is easily digestible because of Navarro's high aptitude for instruction, the type font used for the text and the motivation that stems from realizing the material in the book is golden.And, oh yeah, the book is presented by Phil Hellmuth who has won 11 more WSOP bracelets than any other poker tells author. However, it slows down reading speed and requires increased mental focus for a brain to process the words, feel free to research that statement.
In short, the book is intelligent yet quickly discernable and pictures examples to boot. Talking on and on about this book is warranted but counter-productive to trying to write a short review.On a side note, "Read 'em and reap" also features strain free type face fonts, which allowed me to read the book in two and a half hours.
Pick up your copy today. Well put together and a great addition to the 21st century poker players library.When compared to Caro's book of poker tells I preferred the contemporized/well lit pictures that book featured vs Caro's civil war era photos.
It has been replaced by "Read 'em and Reap." Navarro has written an excellent book that is well put together and logically constructed.
There are so many other (and more accurate) ways to figure out what a player is holding based upon their actual tendencies and playing histories. To be honest, this probably shouldn't even be a book. Too many people think that poker is about reading tells, and books like this, even if they are well put together as this one is, just perpetuates that mistake. But it does beg the question, how important are tells in actual play.
I would challenge anyone to try to write a book about body language with just text. Well, as you know from reading Sklansky's Theory of Poker (I assume you have), even if you had the ability to see everyone's hands, it still takes a lot of knowledge and skill to know what to do with that information, such as knowing when, even if the percentages aren't in your favor, the pot odds make a call worth it. So I've read about this book being called out for not having enough content and having too many photos and repetitive information. This is absolutely right, and would be a complete condemnation of this book.if this was a book about pot odds, or Harrington's M value. It should be a video where Phil and Joe just sit in front of a screen and point out other players' tells. If someone doesn't do this within the next year, I'm pitching it to the Brat.This is just the long way of saying that the book has good value if you're really looking to learn tells.
Plus, people get into the mindset that somehow reading someone is going to give you the right play. Well, if you play online, not at all, obv. This is where I have an issue with the idea of the book. It's just that tells aren't that important. It would be even better/more entertaining if they tried to read what people had as you saw their actual hands. And it has nothing to do with the quality of this particular book--after all, I'm giving it 4 stars. But it's not, it's a book about tells.
But if you decide to actually enter a poker room and play the game face to face, it's fun to think that learning to read tells could help establish you as a winning player. Brilliant. It can't be done. Think about it, you'd get to watch experts call each other's tells, and you would be able test the accuracy of Hellmuth's god-given ability to read people.
Phil Hellmuth's contribution with his little stories is a good one, giving a break here and there with some stories from Poker tables, from his long experience. The fine thing, about it, is that Joe Navaroo is a guy who gained the experience of reading people not in poker games, but in real life tough situations. I would prefer to use this time to read a book about poker instead. Joe Navarro gives his long time experience of how to read people and understand the way they react and why.
He just had to adjust his knowledge to the game, learn about the game and then put his "reading" abilities in work on the tables, to give us the results.This is actually better than anything I have read about poker tells (and I have read a few stuff besides Mike Caro's famous Book of Tells), cause it is right to the point, with lots of pictures showing exactly the faces and reactions of the people, that he describes in his book, right in the same page.I mean, for a guy like me, coming from Greece and with fine, but not excellent, knowledge of English, this is so important. Then the flop comes and it hits big for him, a nut straight I think, I don't remember it exactly but it was the absolut NUTS. Guy then gave an "anti-gravity tell" that it was so obvious, you could not ignore it in anyway. His face was calm and uninterested, his moves smooth, nothing else showed anything, but for anyone aware of anti-gravity tells, this one shouted out to the table: I'VE GOT THE NUTS.Not everyone noticed it and a couple of players paid it with some serious cash. Well, trying to learn about all aspects of the game, I wanted to learn more about poker tells.Of course I have seen Mike Caro's book of poker tells, it is a good one but a bit aged, and I wanted something fresh. So when I came upon a pdf-copy of this one, I took a look. I can actually see the faces he talks about. Who will spend his time reading a 500-page book on tells.
I mean, let's face it, the Super System had to be big and extensive, to live to its reputation, but this one HAD to be smaller. I've got one last thing to say: Tells are vey important for real-life poker players, cause even the best of players, even proffesionals, can't escape from giving tells to anyone who looks for them. If a High Stakes experienced player like Guy Laliberte (or Mike or Daniel etc) gives tells we can spot, then learning about tells is the next most important thing after learning the game itself.And "Read 'em and Reap" is the best tool around to do the job.Hey, Joe, thanks from a reader of yours in distant Greece ;-) In one hand, he watches his hole cards and is rather uninterested, since they were nothing important. And if you consider that I have been only a few times at poker tables (still consider myself a student of the game), only the fact that I can protect myself from being read (there is a whole chapter about that) is crusial.In fact, I recommend to anyone to buy this book. I have been watching "High Stakes Poker" a lot and I could spot tells on Daniel Negreanu, Sam Farha, Mike Matusow (this guy is really full of tells)., Jamie Gold etc.But I can't forget watching a specific episode: On the table, among others, was Guy Laliberte, a billionaire playing with some of the best pros.
And it was so good that I didn't hesitate a moment, I came in and ordered it right away.This book is great. So this 200-page book is IDEAL in size, just as big as it had to be. Period.One more GOOD thing is that this book is not too big. It shows all around in the book. It costs next to nothing and the first time you will be able to protect yourself from being read from another player (by following Joe's advices), you will be paid back the money you spent about it.
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