My name is Will Boyett and I was intoduced to poker through my grandmother who would teach me while she played with her friends. Little would she ever guess that later in life, I would be at the final table of a World Poker Tour event, not just once, but four times in the first four seasons (but more on this later).

In this post I wanted to open up a bit and reveal a little more of my poker side.

Poker for me started thirty some years ago. One day while laying poker at a local card club. I ended up meeting and marrying a very beautiful poker dealer. It was this lady that changed me from being a player (with an up and down bankroll) to actually working in the casino as a dealer (steady paycheck).

I eventually ended up at the world’s largest card club working as a poker dealer when I met Jack McClelland, who was the tournament director at the time.

Jack McClelland and me

Jack took me under his wing and taught me everything he knew about running a tournament. When Jack left the casino I was promoted to the title of “Satellite Director” in charge of overseeing the one-table satellites.

Me On The Cover Of Poker Digest

That’s me in the back row with the goofy smile. Once the hotel behind me was built, the casino I worked for became host to two tournaments on the World Poker Tour and briefly hosted the Professional Poker Tour. Here I am on the set of the Professional Poker Tour.

On The Set Of The PPT

Me and Shana Hiatt, hostess for WPT

For nine years I ran the satellites for the world’s largest card casino. During that time I was fortunate to be able to work with all the biggest names in the industry and to learn from the best players in the industry

Playing Heads Up With Amarillo Slim

The tips and advice I give out here not only comes from my own playing experience but many times I call upon my playing friends to share their experience with  you

Earlier I mentioned I was at four WPT final tables. How did I do it? Simple, since I worked for the casino I asked if I could be the dealer for the final table. Not only was I able to get my mug on television and have fun, I was paid VERY well and was featured not only on the Travel Channel but ended up getting my mug in a Playstation 2 WPT Poker game.  How cool is that!

Here I am dealing on the WPT. In this episode I’m shown dealing to Dr. Jerry Bus (owner of the Los Angeles Lakers). I believe he came in second, sorry Jerry.

Final Table With Jerry Bus On WPT

I thank you for your time and being a loyal visitor to PokerTools.com. I hope you enjoyed this behind the scene look a my contribution to the world of poker.

Don’t forget to post a comment below. See you on the felt!

 Post any comments you have, also any missing links would be appreciated.

 OK  for 2009 from myself, and the staff at PokerTools.com, we promise to bring you more great poker tools, playing tips and inside secrets to improve your game.

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Many players simply play in a tournament and get lucky. Win one of those and you have a large bankroll. Unfortunatly, you need to be extremely lucky. With hundreds, if not thousands of players fighting for the prize money, it is not as easy as it looks on television.

So how does the average player like you or I do it? To find the answer I decided to ask many of the high stakes players how they built their bankroll, and most importantly, how they kept their bankroll intact. Nobody wants to be a railbird (a person who has lost their bankroll and is now forced to watch the action from the rail).

After many interviews, I began to see a common thread. Many of the answers were similar. I then took twenty of the most common ways to build and maintain a bankroll and put it all together in an easy to read and follow ebook.

Now you have no excuse. I’ve laid out all the secrets you need to build a bankroll of $50,000 or more. To download a copy of this informative report, simply CLICK HERE NOW!

A good experienced player can gather lots of information from tells. Tells are signs that reveal information in many different ways, good players know how to spot them and how to use the information that they revealed for their own benefit.

Another important advantage of knowing how to pick up tells is the ability to avoid giving away your own tells. If you know how common players reveal information by tells you can try to look at yourself while playing and to notice what kind of tells you give and by that to learn how to monitor and avoid it.

There are many tells that experienced poker players can read. Tells are very idiosyncratic so in order to know exactly how to read a player’s tell you have to play with the specific player for a long time. In the long run you’ll realize that you’re familiar with your friend’s tells and that you can read them like an open book, but if you’re playing against new opponents in all sorts of poker rooms, here are some of the things that you should look for.

The first thing that you have to look at is the eyes. If you’ll watch professional poker tournaments you’ll notice that many poker pros are playing with sunglasses or visors. This is because the eyes can reveal lots of information about one’s cards.

Take a good look at your opponent’s eyes, learn how he reacts to different situations and you’ll now how to read his tells.

You can also learn a lot from the facial expression on your opponents’ face. You can tell if a player is nervous or eager if he has specific facial expressions or ‘tics’ and you can look for specific smiles or concern if the hands are good or bad.

Look for certain body gestures that can hint on a specific hand. Look for signs of anxiety or distress. There are stimulus responses that even the most experienced players cannot hide, so try to look for those physical changes and to study how the other players respond to different situations.

Try to look for eye pupil dilations, signs of dry throat, sweat, trembling hands and flexing of muscles and changes in the body gestures.

Other things that you have to look for are a repetitive glance at the player’s chips which might indicate a subconscious reaction to different situations at the poker table. Another thing is that you have to look for is the way the players stack their chips. If you notice a different pattern of stacking it might indicate that the player is under pressure or eager to make his move and win the hand.

There are many different tells that can indicate different reactions to situations at the poker table, but you must remember that you cannot count only on tells and you should use other poker strategies if you want to be a better player. Tells can provide valuable information, but serious players know that this is not enough for the game.

About Author

Jack Reider is writing his PHD on Caesar and Augustus, but also frequents the race track. He runs an online gambling guide to betting and online casinos.

I too have had my problems with this site and their lax security and bad programming. In my case I have spent dozens of hours over the past year trying to resolve this problem. I want to explain this situation to you in hopes it may save you countless hours of lost money and headaches as it has cost me.

Scenario: One day I let my girlfriend play on my account with my money. Seems harmless enough until she lost my money. She then went and used her credit card to deposit more funds so she could continue playing. By doing this, my account has now been turned into hers. Her name is now the account holder, all financial information is now hers. Because of this Absolute Poker won’t let her or I withdraw money.  The reason Security gives is that it is against the rules to use someone else’s credit card on a players account. HELLO??? If it is against the rules, why did Absolute Poker not stop it in the first place? It only takes about five minutes to write a piece of code that rejects credit cards that have a different name than the one on the Absolute Poker account. I swear these people are real idiots.

It is clear to me that their software lacks security as in my case and in the case of last years cheating scandal. They refuse to give me my money and they refuse to apologize for causing me so much work and aggravation. In fact, they refuse to allow me to even speak with a supervisor (I believe all the phone people live in India and the support is outsourced so there is no one from Absolute that you can talk to).

With all the poker sites available to play at, I recommend to everyone, please avoid this site and the other site it owns, Ultimate Bet. Their software has many security breaches in it which, as Absolute Poker themselves claim in the above mentioned article allows others to hack in and steal from you.

If you have a horror story about Absolute Poker or Ultimate Bet, I would love to hear it. Feel free to post your comment below.