Phil Hellmuth Presents Read’Em and Reap
by Joe Navarro with Marvin Karlins, Ph. D.
2006, HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Read’Em and Reap was written by former FBI Special agent, Joe Navarro. During his career with the FBI, Mr. Navarro used verbal and non-verbal tells to help solve the cases he was assigned. He became interested in poker and poker tells when he met Annie Duke during a Discovery Channel special on deception in 2004. He now writes books, teaches poker students, and gives private consultations.
In this book, Mr. Navarro discusses verbal and non-verbal tells as they relate to players in a poker game. He introduces a little science to get the reader “grounded” with regard to why the information he will present holds true. He presents lots of photos with detailed explanations, and suggests exercises for improving your observational skills, and poker-table postures for making yourself less-readable.
Topics:
- High confidence and low confidence behaviors
- “Fight or Flight” responses, with an interesting third “F” that he calls the “Freeze” response
- Pacifying behavior, aggressive behavior, regressive behavior, territorial behavior, bluffing behavior
- Body parts to watch: face, neck, shoulders, arms, hands, torso, feet
- Eyebrows, Eyes, nose, lips, tongue, cheeks, suprasternal notch
- How to hide your own tells
- How to approach playing with a poker pro for the first time
I loved this book! It is an easy read (198 pages) that I was able to consume on a lazy Sunday afternoon. So chock full of information, I read through it a second time, and made flash cards in order to test myself later on.
This is a must have for your No Limit Hold’Em library – especially if you are a fish. Don’t sit down at another live poker table until you have read it! Learn what others are looking for in order to steal your chips away. Some of the tells are so simple to spot and control, you will surely gain chips and retain your own immediately after reading Read’Em and Reap. Then as you practice… Well, the WSOP Main Event awaits.
Get it now at Amazon.com