REVIEW
Cardoza
publishing has recently reprinted another
poker classic, Mike Caro's Book of
Poker Tells. Few poker books have
been as widely read as this one, in it's
third major revision since it's original
publication by Gambling Times, Inc.. I
own a copy of one of the printings of
the Gambling Times edition and the Cardoza
edition. Besides reviewing the book, I
can compare these two versions of this
material. In between the release of these
was an edition published by the Mike Caro
University of Poker, Gaming, and Life
Strategy which I don't own.
Mike
Caro's Book of Poker Tells begins
with introductory material that explains
what this book is about, an explanation
of the nomenclature used, an explanation
of the author's MCU Poker Charts, and
a prologue about "Caro's Law of Loose
Wiring". These last two weren't present
in the Gambling Times edition. The introduction
sets up the book well. The reader receives
a good idea of the direction in which
this book is headed.
The
next four sections cover various situations
where players might exhibit "tells". That
is, players give away information about
the strength of their hands via their
actions. These sections are titled, "Tells
From Those Who Are Unaware", "Tells From
Actors", "Some General Tells", and "The
Sounds of Tells". Each tell is discussed
separately. Each explanation includes
one or more photographs depicting the
behavior in question, a categorization
of the tell, an explanation of what it
means, a discussion of what motivates
this behavior, an estimate of the tell's
reliability, and an estimate of its value
to an alert player. The tells the author
discusses have not changed since the original
edition, except that the pictures are
a little smaller and most of the attire
and hair styles of the actors exhibiting
the tells have been abandoned.
Two
criticisms I have of this book are that
I don't believe the tell reliability percentages
are accurate, and I don't think the value
per hour of each tell is realistic. Of
course, a great number of poker players
have read this book, and it has undoubtedly
influenced the way people play. Nonetheless,
the reliability numbers are probably still
somewhat worthwhile if they are considered
in relative terms. That is, in the absence
of other information it may be reasonable
to assume that a tell that Caro assigns
a 97% reliability factor is more reliable
than one that has been assigned a 60%
reliability factor. Still, this information
must be compiled on a player-by-player
basis. Frankly, I can't figure out how
the value per hour statistics were generated,
and my advice would be to ignore these
numbers altogether.
The
book wraps things up with a some summary
information, a quiz on the material the
book covers, and some final thoughts by
the author. The overall flow to the book
is well thought out, and the material
is presented in a clear and logical manner.
Sometimes it is not immediately obvious
what behavior is on display in a given
picture, but this can be very hard to
capture well in still photography. Even
in those cases where the photograph can
be hard to decipher, the text accompanying
the picture is usually sufficient to understand
what the author has in mind.
Despite
some minor flaws and the age of the book
(20 years as of this review), Caro's Book
of Poker Tells is still one of the most
important poker books ever written, and
it's great that this book is still in
print. While this book will certainly
be more relevant to live players than
it will to the online game, its principles
are timeless and are likely to be of benefit
for any alert poker player in any poker
game. There are multiple poker books available
on every aspect of poker except for tells.
One reason for this is because there is
still little room for improvement on Caro's
landmark work. Largely as a consequence
of this, too little has been changed or
added to make it necessary for someone
who owns the original edition of this
book to need to upgrade. However, no poker
library would be complete without a copy
of this book.
Capsule:
Although I don't believe that every bit of information in this book is important or even useful, this is one of the absolute classics of poker scholarship, and every serious poker player should read and study its contents. Even though the game may have changed in the last 20 years, the contents of Caro's Book of Poker Tells is still entirely relevant. Over this time period, the book itself hasn't changed much, so folks who have the original edition do not need to buy a new one.
Nick
Christenson
Gambling
Book Reviews
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