By tommyangelo

August 29, 2011

Elements of Poker: The Best Poker Book Ever

A book review by
Arthur S. Reber

My mantra was: “I don’t do book reviews.” Time to rephrase that to: “I don’t usually do book reviews.” There is a place for this one. The book is Tommy Angelo’s The Elements of Poker. It is, flat out, the best book ever written about poker. It is also not about poker, like Robert Pirsig’s, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance wasn’t about motorcycle maintenance.

Like Pirsig’s masterpiece, Angelo’s book is about life, how to live it, how he’s lived it and mislived it. It’s about how to live poker, not just play it. And make sure it doesn’t play you.

Angelo is widely regarded as the pro’s coach. I’d heard about him. Most long time players have. Guys who play at the nose bleed levels consult him when things go wrong. Rank amateurs hire him to teach them the game. I heard about this book when it first came out last year. “Yeah, yeah,” I thought. “Yet another poker book by another hot shot. Fuggedabout’it.” (Sorry about that, but I lived in Brooklyn for 35 years).

Then a mutual friend sent me an autographed copy with an inscription to me! Hmm. Never met this dude and he’s inscribing books for me. I now had a moral obligation to read it. It has been one of the best obligations I’ve ever fulfilled. The book is good beyond all possible expectation. It is also written with a delicious economy of style that I envy.

If you want insight into how to play A,Q when a tough dude in mid-position throws a raise at you, don’t even open this book. It won’t tell you. Angelo really doesn’t care how you should play this hand, how you would play or how you could play it. If he cares at all about this hand it is about how you approached the hand, your emotional state when you do play it, what you are focusing on when it comes up. He cares about your mood when you sat down, how much attention you’d been paying to that tough dude before, how agitated you are by earlier hands that evening, events in your life, how much you’ve been talking, how much you’ve been listening, how smooth and rhythmic your breathing is, how close to tilting you are and whether you are aware of any of this.

This is a book about how to live. The life being lived is poker. It might as well have been construction or architecture. Angelo could be counseling lawyers or stock brokers or programmers, even bikers.

Here are some gems, like the ones on quitting, a topic that gets talked about all the bloody time. I am sick to death of it and I’ve written about it myself. It bores the hell out of me because everyone looks for a heuristic for guidance. Should you set loss limits? Win thresholds? Should there be time frames involved? Fatigue? Should bankroll size be a factor? Blah. Blah.

Angelo on quitting I: “Walking away is easy. The hard part is standing up.”

Angelo on quitting II: “It’s okay to quit while citing this to yourself as the reason: I want to have fun. I am not having fun. So I will stop this unfun activity now.”

Note that you can amplify the word “fun” by adding anything else that affects you: “boredom,” “fear of going on tilt,” “a big loss,” whatever. I’ve written on quitting too (insert url for “The Final Hour”). It took me a thousand words to say this.

Angelo on difficult decisions: “The decisions that trouble us most are the ones that matter least.”

When I was in graduate school I was offered two ways of earning my keep, two different fellowships. I drove myself batty for a week trying to figure out which to take. Then I had the same insight. If I couldn’t decide, it probably didn’t matter much. After all, if there really was a big difference between them, I’d see it, right?

Angelo on winning/losing: “To win at poker you have to be very good at losing.”

On tilt: “The defining feature of tilt is that there is an emotional link in the chain of cause and effect…. There are three main causes of tilt: Winning, Losing, Breaking Even.”

On the most profitable hands: “It is not pocket aces…. It must be a hand that gets played a lot of different ways.”

Reciprocality: “Before anything flows, there must be a difference. Between different elevations water flows. Between different pressures, air flows. Between different poker players, money flows.”

Players you dislike: “You might use your betting to try to make him less happy, (better to) use it to make him less wealthy.”

Entitlement: “No matter how good you play, or how bad they play, you are not entitled to win. If you have time and money, you are entitled to a seat. That is all.”

On bad beats: “All my money’s in the middle, my cards are face up, and I’ve got the best hand and the river beats me. I’m unrattled and unwavering. I make my next play like it was scripted, because it was.”

Mistakes: “A mistake is when you make a decision that you think was not your best choice.” (Italics added.)

I didn’t bother to make any comments on these last couple. I shouldn’t need to. But it would be very good if you were to read them over very slowly and think them through very carefully.

Angelo meditates. He didn’t always. Angelo breathes. He didn’t always. He plays better poker since he started doing these things.

I am reminded of the two Zen novices who are standing beside a gently flowing river and comparing the greatness of their Masters.

The first says, “I am studying with the finest teacher in the land. You see that apple tree across the water? If he wanted to, he could make an apple fall, float across to him and he would eat it.”

His friend nods and says, “My master is not so great. He merely eats when he is hungry and drinks when he is thirsty and he breathes all the while.”

With whom would you want to study?