FBI Agent Navarro Tells All at Poker SeminarExpert of Non-Verbal Behavior Finds Skills Translate to Poker Table |
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Joe Navarro has a skill all poker players wish they possess, a talent that is so powerful the Federal Government has had him on its payroll for more than a quarter-century. Navarro knows how to look at someone and figure out if he's lying or not. He's able to spot what most of us would interpret as a tiny hand motion, and understand what it means with an accuracy not even rivaled by machines.
Last Sunday, more than 100 people packed into a conference room at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas to hear what the expert in nonverbal communication had to say about poker tells.
Navarro is now retired from the FBI and knew so little about poker only a few years ago that when Phil Hellmuth called him to give a presentation at one of his Camp Hellmuths, Navarro apologized, told him he didn't know who he was, and hung up the phone. Navarro was first introduced to the poker world by Annie Duke, with whom he first met during the taping of a show trying to determine if people can beat machines at detecting lies. Both Duke and Navarro did better than the mechanical detectors. Hellmuth's persistence is nothing short of fantastic, for players who know that playing people, and not the cards, is perhaps the largest component of the game.
To understand people, Navarro believes you first have to understand the brain. Or more precisely, the different parts of the brain that control the instinctive reactions that helped get humans through the adolescence of the species thousands of years ago, before people communicated verbally.
"Foundationally, if you understand the brain, at the table you will not have any problem interpreting behavior," Navarro told the packed house that included pros Bobby Huff, Mark Seif, and World Series of Poker ladies champion Mary Jones.
The study of poker tells - or any kind of "tell" that people transmit and interpret throughout the day - is rooted in many different academic disciplines. It's the study of anthropology, neurology, sociology, anatomy, and a lot other words that end in y, and this is one of the reasons that people can't study what Navarro has learned through years of training and working in the field at a university.
Each person who attended his seminar received a copy of his book, Read'em and Reap A Career FBI Agent's Guide to Decoding Poker Tells, a copy of the Power Point presentation Navarro hangs his seminar on, and enough information to fill several class days (a seminar Navarro gives to FBI students covering generally the same concepts takes three days). He calls his book a contribution to poker literature. It's not meant to replace Mike Caro's book on tells; it's just another way to look at the subject, he says.
Navarro starts his seminar from the very beginning, and in this case, it's when humans had a much smaller brain called the limbic system. It's also known as the reptilian brain because of its evolutionary age and basic functions. This is the part of the brain that told our ancestors to be still when a bear was near, to run in danger, to scratch when itchy.
"It's this brain that reacts to the world around you," Navarro said. "The limbic brain does not think."
The limbic brain is where the actions that can tell us so much about a person in certain situations originate. The limbic brain is the transmitter of tells, but translating what those motions mean is the difficult part. Navarro, who considers himself a teacher above everything else, is the translator.
Navarro's skill set translates from the world of crime fighting to the poker table because, he says, poker conjures up so many raw and primitive emotions. It's a game of aggression, thought and interaction, which are some of the components that helped human beings make it this far down the evolutionary chain, and some of the things that champion-caliber poker players utilize.
And that's why his book and appearances have attracted such an interested audience, some of whom have seen Navarro more than once to hear - and learn - what he has to say.
In Caesars poker room, his students put to work some of the things Navarro went over in the "classroom" three stories above them an hour before. As Navarro observes and listens to the poker players, the players seem like they want to please him and most sit exactly how he told them to (the way Hellmuth sits now, with his hands folded under his chin, a hat pulled down low). When a player reads a player perfectly, Navarro smiles. His students are getting it.
To get more information about Navarro and his future appearances, visit navarropoker.com.
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