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Let me tell you about the time I met an FBI interrogator
named Joe Navarro. Why? Because it was a turning point
in my No Limit Hold’em game.
Last March, I was asked to do an episode of a show
called More Than Human on the Discovery Channel. The
premise for the episode was to pit human lie detectors
against machine lie detectors. They found three people
whose living depended on detecting lies: a psychic named
Dr. Turri, an FBI interrogator (Joe Navarro) and a poker
player (me). The idea was to have the three of us watch
the host answer 25 questions. Some of the answers would
be lies and some would be the truth. Our abilities to
detect truth from fiction would be compared to that
of three lie detecting machines — a polygraph
machine, a machine that detects changes in the voice
and a machine that detects pupil dilation.
I had the pleasure of chatting with Joe throughout
the two days we were filming and it was pure enlightenment.
As a poker player, it is very important for me to be
able to accurately detect lies, since bluffing is essentially
just another form of fibbing. I’ve always known
that there are certain things a bluffer does with their
face — rapid blinking, pursing
of the lips — and body movements — sitting
with an aggressive posture, banging their chips in the
pot. I thought I knew a lot of these kinds of involuntary
reactions to lying, but Mr. Navarro soon showed me what
a neophyte I was.
FBI interrogators spend their lives questioning suspects.
They can spend hours with each interviewee, asking them
the same questions over and over again. They can gauge
the subtle differences in a suspect’s behavior
when they are answering innocuous questions, versus
highly charged questions. And because these reactions
are the cornerstone of the interrogation, there is a
lot written in FBI journals about what kinds of things
to look for.
Joe Navarro was kind enough to share some the articles
he had written for these journals. That day, my poker
game took a jump to the next level.
Reading Joe’s articles helped me put names to
some of the things I instinctively knew —names
like ‘hooding’— an extended blink
that suspects often display just before they tell a
lie. I learned that when women are uncomfortable they
tend to put their hands to the front of their necks,
and when men are uncomfortable they put their hands
to their chins. People tend to grimace right before
they tell a lie — they show a slight smile right
before they begin to speak. And I learned that liars
often show ‘self-soothing’ behavior such
as stroking their fingers.
FBI interrogators need to detect the same thing that
poker players do — they need to know with certainty
when suspects are lying and when they are telling the
truth. Poker players need to know when opponents are
bluffing and when they have a hand. We essentially have
the same jobs.
So how did the humans do in the lie detection test?
Well, not surprisingly, the psychic performed at less
than 50% accuracy. But Joe Navarro and I tied —
we both were accurate on 18 of the 25 answers the host
gave. And we both beat all but one of the machines.
So go find some FBI journals to read; I promise that
they will take your game to the next level.
You can play poker with Annie Duke
at Ultimatebet.com.
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