084 - Zachary Elwood on The Mindset of Poker Tells

In this episode, Zach Elwood, author, former professional poker player, and poker behavior consultant, reveals the most consistent tells that he’s studied over years of playing and analysis. Elliot and Zach discuss why the studying of tells will be more important in the 2018 World Series than in previous years. Listen in to hear one of the few experts on tells in the game share some invaluable tips and tricks that’ll give you an extra advantage at the table.

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Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:50 – Introducing Zach Elwood, author of 3 books on poker tells, who has helped main event final table players prepare through studying and tips 01:20 – Zach has been working on the poker tells video series and has been trying to watch the World Series 01:30 – When he watches the World Series he’s always looking for tells; the earlier in the main, the easier it is to see behaviors 02:20 – The differences between Zach’s 3 books 02:30 – His first book in 2012, “Reading Poker Tells,” goes into things that hadn’t been talked about in terms of physical, verbal and the thinking behind poker tells 02:53 – “Verbal Poker Tells” of 2014 was longer and more in-depth; he’s most proud of this one 03:11 – “Exploiting Poker Tells” came out last year and explored more physical tells, concrete analysis, and fundamental strategy 04:10 – There isn’t a lot of good content about poker strategy; Zach had to do a lot of research and analysis to write his books 04:50 – He created a spreadsheet to create codes and organize patterns he saw on TV and while playing 06:05 – Some poker tell hints and tips 06:15 – Example: The famous hand between Esfandiari and Negreanu when Negreanu raises it on the flop and goes all in, and says “Thank God you didn’t snap call” 06:30 – The expressing of relief after someone doesn’t call immediately will almost always be a pretty honest reaction and can help you narrow down someone’s hand 07:15 – “We can” statements and how he categorized hand statements; bluffers usually don’t want to weaken the perceived range of their hand 08:00 – Indirect weak-hand statements, the consistency of the weak-hand patterns, and understanding underlying intentions 09:33 – A deeper explanation of the book “Exploiting Poker Tells” 09:38 – He revisited ideas that were firmer in his mind after having wrote about them 5 years’ prior 10:00 – It goes into how to determine behaviors as meaningful or not meaningful 10:45 – The things he’s done from outside: the video series and he worked with 2 main event final table WSOP players, Amir Levahot and Max Steinberg 11:25 – They watched old video footage of their opponents and video footage during the WSOP 11:30 – A potential game-changing tell 11:35 – The 2011 main event, Pius Heinz was the champion that year, and he was playing Martin Staszko 11:43 – Heinz had a pronounced tell where he looked down during a hand and at the flop; turns out he had pocket aces 12:30 – Zach made a video analyzing his tells and explains how to use those tells to your advantage 13:30 – It will be more interesting this year from a behavioral perspective because the players won’t have a break before playing 14:00 – There will be more in-the-moment tells 14:22 – Amateur or recreational players are going to be exhausted this year while the professionals will be battle-tested 15:13 – How Zach has used what he’s learned through poker in other areas of life 15:20 – He doesn’t pretend to have special knowledge and doesn’t believe in a correlation 15:32 – He did work identifying fake accounts on Facebook and his work was featured in the Washington Post and New York Times 16:06 – He was excited and his parents were proud, especially because he started out studying print journalism 16:40 – He was pissed about certain things happening in the world and was happy to create awareness about something others didn’t know about 17:20 – He had the same sentiment about poker tells 17:35 – The issue with fake Facebook accounts 17:40 – He’s been friended by fake accounts who were accepted by others in his network 18:20 – A lot of it is financial because the fake accounts drive people to websites who pay for the traffic 19:11 – In some cases the fake account’s purpose is unclear; Zach doesn’t think it’s purely financial 20:15 – Facebook doesn’t seem to care 20:40 – Zach’s recommendations and tips for poker players 21:00 – Strategy is more important than tells, but if you’ve got strategy down and want to learn about tells, watch Zach’s free videos on YouTube 21:27 – Read Zach’s articles on Poker News and his first book “Reading Poker Tells”

3 Key Points

Bluffers usually don’t want to weaken the perceived range of their hand. Strategy is more important than tells. Identifying tells is useful, but you must know how to interpret them and read a player’s intentions. 

Contact/Resources

Website – Reading Poker Tells Zach’s books – “Reading Poker Tells” “Verbal Poker Tells” & “Exploiting Poker Tells” Zach’s YouTube video analyzing Pius Heinz Zach’s YouTube channel Zach's Reading Poker Tells Video Series

Credits

Podcast Production by Podcastily