I’m not a lawyer, nor a poker player, and don’t even have much interest in these topics.  So I figured I would sooner win the World Series of Poker than enjoy Lawyer’s Poker: 52 Lessons that Lawyers Can Learn from Card Players (see Suber’s review).  But surprise, surprise.  It’s one of my favorite books this year!!

So I wanted to talk with the author, Steve Lubet, a Law Professor and Director of the Bartlit Center on Trial Strategy at Northwestern.  Turns out he’s a bright, funny guy, and accomplished both in law and outside the field.  Not a guy I’d want on the other team in the courtroom!!  Not a first-time author… he’s previously written Murder in Tombstone: The Forgotten Trial of Wyatt Earp, and his textbook Modern Trial Advocacy has been used at over 90 American law schools as wellas in Canada, Israel, and China.  Lubet has written humorous commentaries for NPR’s Morning Edition, and his opeds (both serious and humorous) have appeared in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, as well as Slate and Salon.

PokerMoments:  What inspired you to write Lawyer’s Poker?  Was your goal to teach lawyers, or to show similarities between practicing law and playing poker?

Steve Lubet:  I became interested in the idea when I read Andey Bellin’s book, Poker Nation, which combined memoir with poker theory.  I’m always looking for new ways to teach lawyers, and it struck me that poker could provide some good analogies, so I bought a bunch of other poker books and began to research.  Almost immediately, I learned that the great advantage in poker is the constant repetition of a relatively limited number of situations.  In other words, the game is almost like a living social science experiment - high-stakes decision making based on incomplete information.  Lawyers do the same thing, so it made sense to look at common poker strategies and map them onto law practice.

PM:  I found the number of examples in Lawyer’s Poker amazing, and thought they were thought provoking.  How long did it take to think of all the correlations and then write the book?  Any new books in the works? (more…)

Here at PokerMoments, we sometimes share videos of poker games.  There are also televised games with both famous players and famously-great players playing.  This got me to thinking…

Do professional players ever watch these tapes after the game is over, not only to analyze their own play, but more importantly, to peek into how other players play?  As everyone’s cards are shown to the audience during play, I wondered if they could look back afterwards to find clues to how other players play… what they do with poor hands? when do they bluff? any tells that come out with great hands?

This could be a new strategy, giving them an extra edge into their competition’s play.

So what are your thoughts?  Would this give them an edge?  You televised players out there… have you ever done this?

If you try this, sshhhhhhhhh… I won’t tell.  Well, as long as you give me my 50% kickback!

Marc Salem is considered to be one of the foremost authorities on non-verbal communication.  A few weeks ago I had a chance to speak with him by phone and ask him some questions about playing poker.

Marc is not a poker player.  In fact, he has never learned the game, because he says he has an addictive personality - not that it’s a problem - and he feels that if he were to enter a casino, he might never leave due to the adrenaline rush.  But after watching a profile of him on 60 Minutes, I thought he would be a great person to interview for PokerMoments, because of his seemingly uncanny ability to read other people’s minds, a talent that any serious poker player would die to have.  To get an idea of Marc’s skills, check out the video on his site.  I was amazed!

What follows below are some of Marc’s interesting tips to poker players about how to read peoples’ minds, especically when they are faking.  He says that ”lies leak out,” and that a person who is faking often exhibits behavior that indicates this.

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