Beyond Tells [Paperback]

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.

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