Customer Reviews

Beyond Tells: Power Poker Psychology

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This book aims to marry "The Psychology of Poker" by Schoonmaker, with Caro's Book of Poker Tells. The overriding theme is that Caro's Tells have to be interpreted in terms of the personality of the person making the tell and the specific circumstance when the suspected tell is being made.

The author presents six personality types, that corresponds to Schoonmaker's matrix of Tight/Loose and Passive/Aggressive play. The difference is that McKenna bases it on personality type, instead of Poker play. However, he shows that the latter is a reflection of the former, so both systems are analogous. (McKenna comes up with six types because he distinguishes between extreme Loose/Aggressive (which he terms "Party Hardy", instead of Maniac) and a less extreme form that he terms "High Roller". Likewise, the extreme form of Tight/Passive he associates with a Loner personality, and a less extreme form that he characterizes as a "System Player".) He describes each type in terms of: their perception of life, their personality style, strengths and weaknesses, general body language, traits and preferences, and the percent of the US population that fit each category. He not only discusses how to identify these types (as is done by Schoonmaker), but goes a step beyond to discuss how they relate to others, how to relate to them and how to setup a pleasing atmosphere for them.

My main fault with the book is that the first 90 pages are more "psychology of life" and are not directly focused on Poker. He is laying the groundwork for the following, but you can skim this material without much loss. There are then 100 pages associated with defining the player types and how this influences their tells. There are then another 20 pages of general psychology. The most useful part of this book is contained in a 4-page Appendix where he reinstates Caro's tells and how they are influenced by player type. You need the preceding material to fully understand this appendix, so this is more than a four-page book.

Read Caro's book first, or this one will not make very much sense. It is also an interesting adjunct to "The Psychology of Poker". This book is very useful if you have not figured out that Caro's tells can be misleading for some people, i.e., passive players respond passively, even when they are not trying to feign weakness and aggressive players can play aggressively even when they have a good hand. McKenna tries to give some guidance as to how to distinguish "normal" play from an attempt to mislead. His guidance is somewhat general, however, but still useful if it gets one to think "Beyond Tells".

Wish I could give this book more stars. I wanted to like it - the author's credentials as a psychologist and columnist for "Poker Player" seemed promising - but it's too badly written and too lacking in fresh ideas. It's the same old story, somewhat mangled and dressed up in the author's pet jargon.

For tells, you're still better off with the Caro book, even though it's dated; and for poker psychology, you're much, much better off reading the two 2+2 titles - the Alan Schoonmaker book, "The Psychology of Poker," and the John Feeney book, "Inside the Poker Mind."

I am always looking for new ideas and this title intrigued me. It started very slowly for me and I almost added it to the maybe someday stack. If I had stopped after the first 30 or 40 pages I would probably have given it 1 or 2 stars also, but the chapter on meta tells is some of the freshest thinking on poker to come along in quite a while and very useful in the real world. It goes beyond the basic tells of Mike Caro's book but you need to have read Caro's book to fully appreciate this one. I would also agree that the writing is not as good as one would think given the author's academic background and I did find myself rereading numerous sections because of lack of flow. This is why only 4 stars instead of 5. One other thing, the section on meta tells is really the entire value of the book in my opinion but you need to wade through the earlier portions of the book as they lay the foundation for the meta tells section. This approach to using tells and refining them based on player personality is fascinating and useful. Overall a very insightful and useable book if you can get past the slow start. Don't quit too soon and you will have some excellent new tools to add to your poker toolbox.

This book, and its companion volume "Beyond Bluffs," turned out to be very disappointing. I expected a person with a Ph.D. to be a better writer, or at least to have the resources to locate a skilled editor/proofreader. I suspect that these books were hastily thrown together merely to capitalize on the increased interest in the game. I only ended up with them because someone gave me a book store gift card, and I bought them without doing any research. Big mistake.

An earlier reviewer described "Beyond Tells" as being the same old stuff, wrapped in McKenna's pet phrases. I couldn't have said it better. Every therapist/psychologist has their own language for describing (or attempting to describe) the complex behavior people exhibit, and McKenna is no exception. He believes he has personalities boiled down to six main types, which is a vast oversimplification. He essentially ignores the 720 possible combinations of just those six; he doesn't even go too far into the 30 possible combinations of any two of his six types. Think of the following seven poker players, and decide if six types is enough to describe them: Phil Hellmuth, Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, Scotty Nguyen, Doyle Brunson, Joe Hachem, Gus Hansen.

When it comes to poker writing, there is much, MUCH better writing on the market. In "Beyond Bluffs" especially, McKenna sometimes seems to lose his place when discussing the progression of a poker hand, or a series of hands. This discontinuity became such a distraction, I had difficulty gleaning any nuggets of knowledge.

As for McKenna's actual knowledge or skill at the poker tables, I'll just suggest this: use your favorite internet search engine, and try to find anything he's actually won, as opposed to stuff he's written. Try even to find his name (that's James McKenna, not Tom or Mike) in any list of nationally known or ranked players. Each time you fail to find his name, ask yourself, "So what is it that qualifies this guy to write on this subject?" True, not everyone goes to Vegas to make their money, but that makes a fine benchmark for deciding whose books to buy.

Bottom line: Your "poker book" money will be much better spent on Caro, Sklansky, Harrington, or any other person you've heard of before.

This was a very poorly written book that basically doesn't add much to the genre. It felt more like a book written by a psychologist spouting pop psychology who has some basic understanding of Seven Card Stud.

If you are looking for a specific book on Poker Tell's pick up Mike Caro's book. It's a classic for a reason and this book essentially admits that all of the specific tells it gives were first written there.

If you are looking for a book that explains why a specific tell may mean the opposite of what Mike says it means or how to read why a specific tell means one thing for one person an another thing for a different person, pick Navaro's "Read 'em and Reap." He does a much better job explaining why tells exist and how to decipher what a specific tell means for a specific person.

If you are looking for a book on the psychology of poker and why different people play differently---and how to exploit those differences (and avoid them yourself) pick up Shoenberg's "Psychology of Poker."

I got tired of reading the same stories and cliches over and overagain. How many times can he use the same phrase, "You can always tell a poker player, but you can't tell him much" in the same book?

Very interesting and deals not with just poker, but helps you understand many other things in life.

Writing about poker tells is not an easy task. People do not all act the same and then there's those folks who "act" (as in play acting) to deceive their opponents. Pictures are helpfull - lot of pictures - to give the reader a visual of what the author is trying to explain; this book does not have enough pictures nor does it cover enough examples.

Frankly, observing and remembering an opponent's betting patterns is, in my opinion, a helpful, if not always reliable, indicator, but what is a truely reliable indicator?

Poker is a people game. People are different - they don't all act the same when playing poker. One should ride the rail and observe future opponents; take notes, if necessary, before taking a seat at the table. This luxury, however, is not always possible. Professionals don't always give many, if any body language/facial tells, and this leaves only betting patterns, hunches, and the power of the cards one is holding.

My reason for giving this particular book only 2 stars is the fact that this book doesn't offer much new information that has not already been well covered in other books.

This book is really very bad, full of non-sequiturs and won't help you with your game one little bit.

A book on poker tells that is a useful companion to Mike Caro's definitive "Book of Tells".