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Poker Tells for John

When I first started to play poker, one of the books I read was Mike Caro’s book of tells.  To this day Caro’s book remains a must-read in my poker library. I passed on this book to my friend John, as he was horrible at reading people. I was hoping that it could help him out. Well, it did.

A few weeks later we decided to get a game together. I was unaware that John had devoured the book the whole time. John was picking up on tells that had gone unnoticed by him in the past. As his chip stack grew, so did his confidence. I was getting a bit annoyed that I had given him this new tool for his poker arsenal and here he was talking all kinds of trash to everyone at the table, including me. 

After watching him for a while I noticed that he was using a lot of what he had read. For example folding if someone bet with a shaky hand or calling if someone bet with their hand over their mouth. I hatched a plan in my head. Knowing that he had read and was using all he had learned in the book, I decided to use it against him. 

Whenever he was in a hand with me and I had good cards, I would put my hand over my mouth when I bet or I would splash the pot and throw in my chips with a hard flick of the wrist. I kept doing it, chipping away at his stack until I finally got him all in. He was already on tilt after losing most of his chips so I knew I could probably get him to chase the pot with a mediocre hand, which he did. 

Afterwards, we sat and he asked me if I could help him out because he felt he had played so badly towards the end. I told him some of the things I noticed that he did wrong and ended with “Oh yeah, don’t bite the hand that feeds you.” I knew he was confused so I asked him “Did you forget who gave you that book on tells?” 

I proceeded to explain that I was fine with him doing well and collecting more poker chips, up until he started talking trash to me. That was where I drew the line. I had turned his strongest weapon into his worst nightmare. Mess with the bull and you get the horns.