How A Poker Pro 'Reads' His Opponents

Joe Weisenthal (0:12)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:17)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:19)

Tracy, today we're going to talk about a subject that we've talked about a lot on Odd Lots over the years, but I don't think we've done an episode on it recently. Do you know what it is?

Tracy Alloway (0:31)

I mean, it could be anything, but go on, what is it?

Joe Weisenthal (0:34)

Okay, so I'll give you another hint. It's a subject that I really like and am interested in, and you always sort of claim that you know nothing about it and are not interested in it.

Tracy Alloway (0:45)

It's totally not a claim, Joe, and I think I know where you're heading with this. It's the objective truth. I know nothing about the subject, and if we were to engage in this particular subject together, that would become rapidly apparent.

Joe Weisenthal (1:00)

Okay, well, we're going to do another episode about the game of poker, which I really like, which a lot of people in markets and finance like to do in their spare time. And the reason is, obviously, because a lot of the things that go on in trading and a lot of the decisions that people have to make are similar to decisions that people have to make in poker, because there is the sort of calculable aspect to it. There is math involved, but there's also a lot of psychology involved and things that you just cannot brute force compute. And that's, of course, what makes markets so interesting. We've obviously hit the subject for many ways in the past.

One thing that we haven't really talked about is something that a lot of people think is a very important aspect of poker, which is tells. And that is you're sitting across from someone at the other side of the table, and they do something weird, like maybe they run their hand through their hair or they pick their nose or just whatever it is weird, or they put on their sunglasses and a big hand.

You know, I'm just saying, like, different sort of impulses that people have that people at the table try to read.

Tracy Alloway (2:08)

So this is something, I mean, you'd have to be living under a rock not to know about this one, but yeah, there are tells, and you're supposed to be able to read them, and that's going to help you in figuring out what the other person's hand is. And then maybe even if you have a terrible hand, you can still beat them using human psychology. I know this. Yes.

Joe Weisenthal (2:28)

And I think there's, like, I think in the movie Rounders, which was about poker, there's some major stuff with tells. Anyway, so today we are going to be talking with a guest whose specialty is exactly this, reading poker tells and how you can sort of watch someone and look at someone and learn something about maybe what they're holding or their psychology from their physical actions. And much in the same way that other aspects of poker may have applications to other things in the world, like investing and other sorts of making decisions that involve risk. So too do poker tells. So without further ado, I'm gonna bring in Zachary Elwood. He is the author of multiple books on the subject of poker tells.

Zach, thank you very much for joining us.

Zachary Elwood (3:16)

Hey, thank you guys.

Joe Weisenthal (3:18)

Zach, what is your background and what is a tell? How would you define a tell?

Zachary Elwood (3:24)

Well, I would say I have a more formal definition of my book, but off the cuff, I would say it's a behavior that gives information about something, someone's hand in poker, obviously, but outside of poker, you get, you know, it just gives information about anything that they're concealing.

Joe Weisenthal (3:43)

Why are you qualified to tell us about poker tells?

Zachary Elwood (3:47)

Sure, that's a good question, yeah. Though basically I played for a living full-time for about three and a half years. This was, you know, 2004 to 2007 time period. And since then I've played, you know, on the side supplementally. And before that, I grew up playing poker and I've always had an interest in it.

During the poker boom, you know, years, which were when everyone was playing poker, which was about 2003, you know, 2008 or so, somewhere in there, I was playing a lot of poker, playing for a living and supplementally. And I was always wondering why there wasn't a better poker book, poker tells book.