This week I read Phil Hellmuth Presents Read ‘Em and Reap: A Career FBI Agent’s Guide to Decoding Poker Tells. It was really good.
Right after finishing up the book, I loaded up Youtube and watched some pro poker. I was immediately able to spot tells in the first couple of hands. Now, I’m not saying that I could sit at the final table and win, but I’m convinced that making a concerted effort to learn how to read these tells will improve my poker game.
A book that’s been on my reading list for a while is a book by Ed Miller about “playing the player instead of the cards.” You hear about that a lot in poker, but I’ve never really moved up to that stage. Having read this book, I’m a lot more confident in my ability to predict my opponents’ moves and try to play one move ahead of them.
For example, I don’t check-raise my strong hands from early as much as I should because I’m afraid about the hand checking all the way around and letting my opponents see another card for free, especially if there is a draw on the board. But, now that I’ve read about engagement tells, I can get a better read on how interested a later player is in the hand. If, based on my read, I believe she’s going to bet the hand, I’ll feel a lot more comfortable checking and letting her chips come to me rather than betting and going after them.
The truth is, I’m just scratching the surface with poker. I have a lot more to learn, maybe even more important stuff to learn, but Read ‘Em and Reap definitely helped me understand the game better, and that’s really all I can ask from a poker book.
See the full list of books that I’ve read for this project here.
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