The sociology of poker tells

I recently read Cate Hall's 2024 article about agency. It's probably the first article I ever found by pre-ordering the book that grew out of that very article. Cate has a poker background and notes that she got a big edge from studying physical reads. This is not surprising to me at all: I was always much more tell-oriented1 than most of my peers, and I got a lot of eye-rolls for saying so. A few notes: Emphasizing physical information violates a lot of strong players' ideas not just of how to study effectively but of what poker is. To them, caring a lot about physical reads is abandoning the real thing for a cartoon. Similarly, and closely relatedly: I've maintained for many years now that newer generations of poker players are not nearly aware enough of cheating. Again, it offends many of these players' sense of what poker is. Paying too little attention to physical reads is also a great example of over-emphasizing quantitative kinds of analysis. Of course, when you get a read, you…