Ultimate Guide to Poker Tells by Randy Burgess and Carl Baldassarre

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Overview
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In the mode of Mike Caro’s book on tells, Burgess and Baldassarre (B&B) try to modernize Caro’s advice and compliment it with advice on how to protect yourself from broadcasting your hand. The whole book aims to make you a ‘poker psychic.’

Book Structure
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In 195 pages B&B educate the reader in 10 chapters that span about 18 pages each. Each chapter has subsections but those are not listed in the table of contents. The advice is broken down and delivered most often in this mode: tell, example, explanation, what to do.

Unique Advantages
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The Further Resources area is awesome. Anyone who has ever written a literary review for a term paper will appreciate the suggested readings and summation of each. The book also cites some unconventional sources like micro expressions and yoga. You don’t get that from other poker books. It also addresses Omaha and Stud when most ‘poker’ books only talk about holdem.

Disadvantages
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The authors are writers first, poker players second. Ugh. The Test Your Tell Detector section is a bit cheesy and disjointed. Caro paired tells with pictures so the reader had a visual reference while they read. B&B do not mimic that successful formula. The poker glossary is filler, probably there for the authors not the reader. The persistent “tell, example, what to do” pattern without visual aids makes for unentertaining reading at times.

Conclusion
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The unorthodox sources make this book a bit deeper than most on the same subject. The pictures, however, are like Caro’s in one way though – a bit exaggerated and probably not memorable enough to make an impression.

Focus: 8/10
B&B keep on track and cover both limit and no limit styles of play. The promises of the poker psychic fall a bit short. The tall tale section reinforces premise that ‘it’s all in context.’

Quality of advice: 9/10
B&B do well to suggest developing your reads with the same variety that an athlete would cross-train. They also cite so many experts in such a multitude of areas that their book would have to be written in code to get less than a 9 of 10.

Examples: 8/10
Pretty thorough with he examples but the missing photos / disjoined quiz make for some awkward flipping of pages back and forth.

Readability: 7/10
At times dry and almost a rehash of Caro’s book. It brought me back to when I was 12 years old reading an English book in class. The authors’ lack of professional poker experience definitely comes through.

Overall (not an average): 6/10 or 4/10
If you’ve read Caro’s book and other books on tells, it’s a 4. If this is the first book you’re getting on tells, it’s a 6.

VERDICT: Not a bad book but it feels too much like a school book. I know I’m studying tells but, damn, don’t make me feel like I am.

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