Ep 120: The Art of Reading

**Amit Varma** (0:00)
Welcome, you're listening to the audio version of Everything is Everything. This show is a video show. There are sometimes visuals that help you appreciate the content better, but mostly the audio should be enough. Please, please, please do subscribe to us on YouTube also.

**Ajay Shah** (0:27)
Welcome, gentle reader, to this episode of Everything is Everything, this most remarkable YouTube show by Amit Varma and me, I'm a guy called Ajay. Today, in the depth of the winter of August, Amit has upped his attire so as to be warmer. Tell us about it, Amit.

**Amit Varma** (0:46)
So, number one, I'm a huge fan of hoodies. Let's break that sentence down, because today we're talking about the art of reading. What does it mean to say I'm a huge fan of hoodies? It means two things. One, I'm huge and two, I'm a fan of hoodies. I'm also a huge fan of hoodies. So, you see, a careful reading will reward you with additional meaning and layers. Why am I a fan of hoodies? When did I become a fan of hoodies? I became a fan of hoodies when I was a professional poker player between 2010 and 2015 Now, poker is fundamentally all about math, common janta thinks it's about tells, hiding tells, looking at the other person's pulse on the neck and realizing they are bluffing, etc.
Actually, those play a small part. It's completely math. We've got a great episode on poker where we spoke exactly about that in the world that game theory plays. But it is possible that in live games, you could be giving away a lot of tells. So the trick there is poker players will often hide as much of themselves as possible. So typically, if I have made a bet, the typical way for me to sit would be something like this, covering my face, just no eye contact, look at the table, don't smile, don't react to anything that's said. And I would have to keep it standard whether I am bluffing or not. So all that they see is, they see as little of me as possible and I am just looking at the table and everything has to be exactly the same. You can of course give off tells, but only bad players fall for that. But typically, because for example, the pupils dilate sometimes when you are in great anxiety, so people look for pupils dilating. You know, the one tell is that, you know, the carotid artery or whatever over here, that starts pulsing. One reliable tell I have used a lot is, you try to make the person smile normally with a joke. And human beings have two kinds of smiles. There is a fake smile and a genuine smile. The fake smile is for the camera. Okay, say cheese. That's for the camera, right? I don't do that, but it's for the camera. And a genuine smile is different. It's a kind of smile that comes to my face when I see you, Ajay Shah, and the smile that is appearing on your face right now. That's a genuine smile. And you can generally make out the difference. And if the guy has a genuine smile on his face, I'll realize that he's comfortable. And that may or may not say something, you update your priors a little bit. Or but if he's got a fake smile, it means he's worried. What is he worried about? Of course, he could be, it doesn't mean he's bluffing. Maybe he's got a great hand and he's got to go to the loo and he's thinking if this motherfucker doesn't call a fault quickly, my shit will come out here. So he could be nervous because of that. But generally, you can update a bit. So anyway, so that is my love for the Hoodie. This Hoodie is from an online company called Beva Coofe. I have an awesome brown Hoodie at home from H&M, big fan of H&M as we have spoken in the past. Turn Black, alas, does not have any kurta hoodies, but it is what it is. And with that, I have rambled enough, please.

**Ajay Shah** (3:36)
There's a line I cannot place. Is it Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett? She had a smile that never reached her eyes.

**Amit Varma** (3:44)
That's a beautiful line. I don't know which one of them it is, but hard-boiled fiction boys. And those guys were masters of saying things tersely. Short sentences pack in a lot, right? That doesn't mean, though, that you should read them fast, because short sentences make for a fast rhythm. But sometimes when you're reading fiction, as I will talk about later, you need to slow down.