Verbal Poker Tells

Not everyone exhibits tells. So this book won't help you against every opponent. Or will it?Actually it will. Reading this book, and/or the other books in the series, has a huge benefit no matter how many tells your opponents give off. By reading these books you'll know how to stop giving tells YOURSELF."Will you show if I fold?" Have you ever answered that question in the past? What was your answer? What information did that answer give your opponent? If you aren't sure, then you need this book!And that's just one of dozens of verbal interactions that the author analyzes.Master this book and you'll not only gain insight into some (not ALL of your opponents reliably exhibit these tells) of your opponents, but just as or more importantly you'll understand what not to do yourself.Elwood covers numerous classes of statements, explaining the conscious and subconscious factors at work, and then provides real world, concrete examples of those statements happening in live poker games. He makes the content easy to learn and memorable so that when you're at the tables you can actually put your knowledge into practice.

Having read everything that there is to read on the subject, I can assure you that Verbal Poker tells is the best book on the subject that you will find. It totally changed the way I play poker.

Thank you Zach for writing this book! While this book alone won't make you a winning poker, it definitely will help take you to the next level, and is a MUST for any poker library! It would take years to learn everything that is in this book on you own. Much of the talk at the table can be very subtle, this books helps you to figure out what that talk might mean. Since reading this book I've become a lot more conscious of what's being said at the table, whether I'm in the hand or not. It's surprising how much you miss when you don't know what to look for. This isn't a one time read book. I read it once and have since gone back and re-read parts that I highlighted the first time through. I emailed Zach a question and I got a quick response. He wants you to understand his ideas, which I felt was obvious in his writing and his email response. I've also read his book Reading Poker Tells, which is also a must have.If you want to take you game to the next level, and increase your edge, as Zach says in the book possibly raise your win rate by 10-20%, then this is the book for you. A 10% increase in win rate is significant. I play 1-2 and 1-3 no-limit, and the tells at those tables are beginning to seem more and obvious. You need every edge you can at the poker table.

Good book... Caro is a good comparison. Some of the contrasts he draws are interesting and useful. Others are less clear and equate to, "Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't". I sat down at a cash game after reading about half the book and found I was trying to draw conversation out of opponents and wondering if I was giving anything away. I clammed up and just listened - applied some of the things I learned in the book against the play styles I had learned and felt like that was the right balance to strike (I ended up +$600 in a $1-2 NLH five hour session, but it was a soft table).

The book delivers excellent content with a healthy respect for his subject matter. It contains clear explanations of what common verbal tells indicate about opponents' hands, and these are verbal tells that I've regularly heard in my poker games. The games I happen to play are a competitive free poker league (World Tavern Poker), and $50 and $100 buy-in tournaments with between 20 and 100 players, but I'm confident these verbal tells occur at other levels of poker as well. Elwood is humble in his writing style and delivers this information without the look-at-me attitude I find in some other poker books. He cites Caro's book at times, and then builds on on those ideas with additional information. It's great how he decryps what seem like innocuous statements, and within a few pages shows that someone with a strong hand would never had said such a thing. He treats poker tells like a science to be studied, crediting those who came before him, and works to help us take the next step in understanding poker tells and the human nature that generates them. As much as I like Caro's book, I would say that Elwood is now the leading authority on poker tells. This is a strongly positive review, but as the book will tell you, sometimes strong means strong,

A well-written, comprehensive guide to decoding opponents' verbal statements during poker. Mr. Elwood also writes articles about poker tells on his website (you can find it in the author information section here on Amazon).I originally purchased Zach Elwood's first book, (Reading Poker Tells, based on endorsements from well-known poker players. I bought this book because the first was very good.Edit to add:I forgot to mention that the author also has a lot of other products available on his website, including a Reading Poker Tells Video Course, so that you can see the tells he describes in the books. You can buy the products individually, or as part of a bundle. The bundles are a pretty good deal. I suggest at least looking at them before buying a book through Amazon; you may find that you get a lot more value by buying directly from the author.His customer service is excellent. I've contacted him a couple of times, and he's always been very quick to respond.And lastly, I have no relationship with the author other than being a (very) satisfied customer.