Psychology: Knowing when to fold ’em isn’t everything

“They are as incriminating in the interrogation room as they are in the poker room. That’s the message ex-FBI agent Joe Navarro gave 100 female players Friday in a seminar that lifted the lid on nonverbal clues known in poker circles as tells.

Crinkle your nose and you think your cards stink. Interlocking fingers are a sign you’re worried. Lean in toward the pot and you probably think it’s yours already.

“Your lips tighten when you’re stressed,” Navarro, 54, told a concerned Margaret Gast, a 50-year-old ice-skate shop owner from Houston, who he pulled off the felt for one-on-one advice. “You’re doing it when I’m talking right now. You don’t need to tell me, I know.”

The News Tribune (06/10/07)

Psychology: Jeff Haney on a former FBI agent who learned to read suspects and now teaches poker players how to read ‘tells’

“For all his skill in spotting “tells” at the poker table, Joe Navarro has little interest in gambling himself.

During most of his 25-year career with the FBI, in fact, Navarro rarely used the word “tell” – a poker term referring to mannerisms through which players involuntarily reveal information about the strength of their hand or whether they might be bluffing.

“Poker players call them tells,” Navarro said. “I call it ‘nonverbal behavior’ or ‘nonverbal communication.’ It’s basically the same thing.”

As a special agent and a supervisor in counterintelligence and counterterrorism with the FBI, Navarro had little time or inclination for gambling in poker parlors…”

Las Vegas Sun (05/24/07)