Poker Fantasy Camps

In the early days of the poker boom, which was a few years ago, I was excited about the concept of poker camps. Howard Lederer hosted the first one. People from all over the world paid good money to learn from some of the best professionals how to play a more advanced game of poker. Afterward, the World Poker Tour (WPT) started its boot camp. The WPT boot camp used its own footage from previous WPT events to provide the students real-life situations. It was a "you make the call" game in which you could see if you played a hand similar to the pro on TV. Finally, Phil Hellmuth followed the trend and held his own Camp Hellmuth. He asked if I would be a speaker at the event, and of course I said yes. Unfortunately, my schedule changed and I could attend only one day of the three.

I watched a question-and-answer period. I am sure that all fantasy camps have general question-and-answer sessions with their pros, and if I were to run a camp, I would have at least one a day. Even though it is hard to give yes or no answers in poker because so much of it is situational, asking never hurts. Answering the tough questions probably helps out the professional players, because it forces them to think about why they did what they did instead of just doing it at the tables. Discussing poker is always good, and it is always better if you can get good insight from a pro.

The seminar that I saw before leaving for an office emergency (I know, there aren't any poker emergencies) was on tells, and it was taught by an FBI agent. This agent has watched hundreds of hours of poker, looking only at the behavioral patterns of the players. He compared poker tells to natural tells that humans exhibit while being confronted by a bear in the wild. To make a very good long story short, he said that if you saw a bear, you would act a certain way, and that is the same way that most people act after a bad flop. This guy was so good that T.J. Cloutier and Phil Hellmuth both took many pages of notes on tells, and they aren't new to the game. T.J. told me that evening that he picked up four tells in the same hand from a player, and he never knew these tells before.

If someone who has played as many hours as T.J. is still learning and discovering new tells, everyone should admit to themselves that they can always get better at this game if they apply themselves.