Gettin a leg up

By Joe Navarro
This is a question I ask attendees at the various poker seminars and training camps I conduct every year. The answer is important, because once you know the most honest part of an individual’s body, that’s where you’ll want to look to pick up the most accurate read on what your opponent is holding. The problem is that few attendees know the right answer; in fact, unless they are familiar with Read ‘em and Reap, they almost always respond incorrectly and, thus, they ignore the part of a person’s anatomy that gives significant, uncensored information about his true card strength.The correct answer to the question: “What is the most honest part of your body?” is… your feet!

That’s right: Your feet win the honesty award hands, uh, feet down every time. The feet are truly remarkable and truthful in the information they convey. Unfortunately, when it comes to reading body language, most poker players start at the top (face) of their opponent(s) and work their way down, in spite of the fact that the face is the one feature of the body that is most often used to bluff and conceal true sentiments. My approach is the exact opposite: I begin with the feet and move up from there. This is because when it comes to the honesty of a person’s responses, the degree of truthfulness decreases as we move from the soles of our feet to the top of our head. Thus, our feet are the most honest part of our body, and our face is the most deceptive.

When you think about it, there’s good reason for the deceitful nature of our facial expressions. We lie with our face because that’s what we’ve been taught to do since early childhood. “Don’t make that face!” our parents growl when we honestly react to Aunt Wilma’s treacherous meat loaf. “At least look happy when your cousins stop by,” they add, and you learn how to force a smile. Mom and Dad are, in essence, telling us to hide, conceal, deceive, lie with our face… so we tend to get pretty good at it. So good, in fact, that when we put on a happy face at the poker table, we might look like we’ve got…. Read rest of article at Bluff Magazine

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