Every eyebrow tic, every hand jitter, presents a clue to what cards they're holding. Binion's lies away from the Strip, in the slightly seedy old downtown. Outside, it's a glare-bright day as Mike Caro steers his car through the even seedier Vegas outskirts. A desert wind blows along the vacant lots, trapping tumbling plastic bags in the scrub brush. When you don't know anything, everything's a coin flip, a 50-50 bet, unless you've observed, taken into account everything around you.
Reading tells is a huge edge.
We're headed to the Gambler's Book Shop - the resource for students of gambling in all its forms. More a library than just a store, the shop features the most comprehensive collection of gambling publications in the world. The old fortunetellers, to find out if they were on the right track, looked at your pupils and your carotid artery to see if you got excited as they talked. Eventually, Schwartz finds studies on tells dating back to the turn of the century. Most gambling books dwell on the numbers - how to play the percentages, not how to read minds.