I was thinking about the anger issues again yesterday, and something (perhaps obvious) occurred to me. I had always thought I should be used to making mistakes and getting over anger. But actually that's precisely what has made the anger get worse - the fact that I am so experienced and shouldn't be making such amateur mistakes. The more experience I have at something, quite understandably the ...
Beginner thoughts on heads-up Hold’em online
I played my first real heads-up no-limit cash games yesterday. I've played heads-up in tournament situations before but I've never played a pure heads-up game. I've been hearing so much about all the heads-up nosebleed action through Twoplustwo (Isildur, Durrrr, Jungleman, PA, and all those guys) that I got a little intrigued. I felt that working on heads-up would definitely improve my game. ...
Review of Barry Greenstein’s “Ace on the River”
Ace on the River by Barry Greenstein This is a truly unique book, and a great one. It astonished me to read some of the negative reviews on Amazon about this book. Apparently many amateur players were expecting an advanced strategy book or something. Nowhere does Barry promise this. Instead, the subtitle to the book is "An advanced poker guide". He is true to his word, because the book ...
Using peripheral vision in poker
I’m a big believer in the power of peripheral vision. I think that with training, your peripheral vision can become a very solid tool for keeping track of your surroundings and the actions of the people around you. Military and martial arts groups work on developing peripheral vision because it’s incredibly useful for getting a quick sense of your surroundings and for doing so ...
New poker book review section
I started a new section of poker book reviews. I've got reviews of two books there now: the Ultimate Guide to Poker Tells (it sucks), and Gus Hansen's Every Hand Revealed (pretty decent). Comments can be made on those pages; I'd love to hear if anyone agrees with some of the harsh criticisms I've made about the first book. I've also started a Twitter account: http://twitter.com/apokerplayer. ...
Review of “Every Hand Revealed”, by Gus Hansen
Every Hand Revealed by Gus Hansen I'm the author of the books Reading Poker Tells and Verbal Poker Tells and this is a review of Gus Hansen's book Every Hand Revealed. This book is a hand-by-hand breakdown of his win of the Aussie Millions World Poker Tour tournament, where he waded through 747 players and won $1.2 million. The book doesn’t include every single hand, of course (not his ...
Review of “Ultimate Guide to Poker Tells”
Ultimate Guide to Poker Tells by Randy Burgess and Carl Baldassarre First of all, there is nothing “ultimate” about this book. It’s bad and I wouldn't make that statement lightly. While reading this book, I went back and forth several times about how much blame should be directed toward the authors. On the one hand, they are self-proclaimed micro-stakes amateur players, and don’t try to act ...
Creating a loose, careless image in no-limit
This weekend I was thinking about the ideal image you want to have when you're playing no-limit Hold'em. Here are the main things I want my opponents to be thinking about me: I want my opponents to think it's hard to bluff me. I want my opponents to think I'm loose enough to have any two cards in any situation. I want my opponents to think I don't care about the money. These are all ...
Poker in Cabo San Lucas
NOTE: THIS IS VERY OUTDATED; IT WAS WRITTEN IN 2010. I wanted to write about my poker experience in Cabo San Lucas because it was difficult for me to find anything online about the poker scene there. It turns out that Cabo does have a poker scene: it consists of a single electronic poker table. ...
Most useful tells in limit poker
I’ve been playing more limit hold'em lately, and I’ve put some thought into the tells that are most useful at limit versus the most useful ones at no-limit. Obviously there’s a lot less psychological pressure in limit, which makes for less tells. And the regular players, even the horrible ones, are accustomed to the common situations of the game and therefore give away less information. But ...