Strategy with Kristy: Jonathan Little Discusses His Poker Strategy Book

March 29, 2012

Kristy Arnett Editor

Jonathan Little has not only won more than $5 million in online and live tournaments, but has also penned Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker Volume I and II, with the latter book having been released a few weeks ago. Both books were written in one three-week period, but publishers thought it best to release them in two parts.

Little says the first volume focused on teaching fundamentals and basics, and that Volume Two goes into how to correctly apply the basics learned in Volume One. On this week's Strategy with Kristy podcast, Little discusses a few key topics in Volume II.

Here is a snippet from the interview:

You have a section in the book about tells. Can you talk about a few basic tells?

First, I'll talk about why tells don't really matter if you don't know how to play well and you're making fundamental blunders in a hand. If you have a tell that your opponent has a strong hand, it doesn't really matter that much if you're going to be vastly overplaying your hands or playing too tight.

A tell should generally shift a really close call into a fold or a really close call into a raise, or something like that. It should help sway the borderline decisions. Your really standard decisions shouldn't really sway too much unless your opponent just has a blatantly clear tell.

For example, if a player starts breathing really hard when he has a good hand. That's sort of a basic tell that a lot of players, even competent players, will do. They'll start breathing really heavy whenever they have a strong hand or they'll start blinking a lot whenever they have a weak hand.

I outline quite a few of these tells in the book. They are pretty much what I've observed at the poker tables and also discussed with other poker players. They are all pretty good standard tells that most people don't control or don't think about controlling.

Can you explain what a reverse tell is and what you think about them?

Reverse tells are when you're trying to throw off someone who knows the basic tells. I generally don't do reverse tells too often because I think they're kind of fishy in general.