Fired up! Ready to go!

My reading schedule is all out of whack, but I'm making some pretty good progress. I went ahead and picked up the Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide, and I thought Keith Sexton's piece about starting hands in tournament stud was excellent. I didn't think so highly, however, of David Grey's section. As mentioned previously, I read a review on it, and I would have to agree with the reviewer's assessment that Grey's teaching is just way too vague to be of much use. Hopefully, the other sections will justify the $30 I spent on it, whenever I get around to perusing them. So far I think I've gotten about $3 worth of value. Will update.

Last night, I went and played the 4/8 Stud at Commerce, then came home and read the Chip Reese section of SuperSystem. It was really encouraging to re-read that text after so long ... there were some tactics that I had just glossed over in the past, but which I had nonetheless been executing at the table. Things in the book that I had not highlighted before, but had somehow managed to learn through experience. Certain concepts made more sense to me now. So I'm starting to feel pretty confident about my game. I'm definitely NOWHERE NEAR a Ted Forrest or a John Hennigan, but right now I am pretty sure I'm currently getting the maximum out of my abilities.

(Sidebar: This is why it's recommended to read poker books after you are already somewhat familiar with a particular game. Sure, there are some books made especially for the complete novice. But even with those, I think you'll get more out of text if you already have a good grasp on the mechanics and basic rhythms of play. Then you can read up and plug some of the [inevitable] holes in your game. Play more, and then re-read. Rinse, and repeat. My two cents.)

Today on the bus to work, and on my lunch break, I've been reading the Sklansky text. This is an extremely dense book, and there are a lot of things I did not pick up on while reading through it before. They do a really good job of covering just about every situation that might arise in a seven-card stud cash game. Better put -- they provide enough examples of concepts and the different variations on those concepts that come up during gameplay that it's really easy to extrapolate their teachings to cover any hand of stud poker. Must read!

I've also been practicing on PokerStars with stud tournaments. I've played in two of them, and busted in each. Not a great sign. But these were low-stakes donkaments, with plenty of idiots who chased me down the river every time I picked up a good starting hand. I imagine the quality of play in a $1,500 tourney will be higher. Plus, I generally just do better in live games. There are so many small things that don't really translate to online play. Thus, I'm not too concerned about my lack of success on Stars. It's good practice just to see how play is affected by the rising blinds, how the inability to rebuy changes strategy, etc. ... I've experienced these things in hold'em tournaments but not in stud. The lack of many other ways to practice makes the frustration of online play kinda worth it.

That's about all I have to report. I blast off in five days, and it can't get here soon enough. It's taking a lot for me to resist playing in hold'em home games until the big day. But I'm busy enough at work that I can manage the urge ... I think.

Featured Authors: Alan Schoonmaker

Most poker authors fall into 2 categories. One type recounts stories from poker games and the other provides strategy and advice on how to play the game. However, our first featured author is neither. He looks at poker from a psychological background and tries to help people understand why they act and feel in certain way.

Alan Schoonmaker received his Phd in Psychology from UC Berkeley and then did research and taught at UCLA, Carnegie-Mellon, and The Catholic University of Louvain. He also worked as a business consultant before ultimately moving on to poker. He has published one poker book so far called The Psychology of Poker and has a second book on the way. He also writes regularly for Card Player Magazine. (All biographical material was obtained from the Two Plus Two website.)

You can find his Card Player articles archived at Card Players official site and you can find information about his book at Two Plus Two. Here are some of his articles to start with.

It's a Great Party, But... Part 1 - One of Schoonmaker's many multipart aticles. In this, he discusses the state of poker today and where it is going. Using Darwinian theory, he hypothesizes that the current fishy state of poker won't last as more and more fish either die out or get teeth of their own.

Freud and Poker - Jamin is planning on posting about this article so I'll refrain from saying much about it. It is an interesting little piece about why people act the way they do at the poker table. He uses Freud's ideas to explain this.

Fun vs Profit - Another article talking about why people who supposedly are trying to maximize their profit choose to play a non-optimal strategy or choose to act in a certain manner at the table when they know it is not a winning way.

http://www.cardplayer.com/poker_magazine/archives/?a_id=13012&m_id=49 - Schoonmaker discusses why time and time again many people decide that they want to quit playing poker and if they actually should.

Planning Your Personal Development - Part 1 - The first of a series of 6 articles which first introduced me to Schoonmaker as an author. I believe this series has given me information which will help me a lot in the long run so I will spend some time talking about it. First, these give an in depth walkthrough about how to set a realistic, ultimate goal and then set intermediate goals to help you reach it. Then it moves on to discuss how to evaluate yourself as a poker player in order to see in what areas you are strong and which areas you are weak. It does this by asking you to rate many qualities on a scale of 1-5 in comparison to the players you expect to be playing against. These results can be interesting and surprising. Take mine for example. There are six main categories. I did very well in 4 of the 6. For "Knowledge (Understanding of)" I had 6 of 7 traits listed as assets. For "Knowledge (Depth of)" I had 5 of 7. Under "Personal Traits" I had 22 of 33 and under "Situational Factors" 4 of 5 were listed as assets. The 5th category was "mental abilities" and only 10 of 17 I listed as assets. However, this wasn't unexpected because as a whole the poker community is fairly intelligent. What did surprise me was how I did in the 6th category "Skills." In this, only 16 of 31 skills did I list as assets against the poker players I would most likely be playing against. I have been a winning online poker player for 8 months now and I would have expected that to be due to greater skill when in actuality it seems it may have been due to better knowledge and personal traits. The bright spot of this anaylsis is that I now have a list of 15 "skills" that I need to improve upon and I plan on doing that. This was where this was most helpful to me. Before I read these articles, I could maybe list 3 or 4 skills I needed to improve upon when compared against my current competition. This helped me better see how far I still need to go to become a really good poker player and it very well could help you too.

Featured Authors: Introduction

Let's face it. If you are getting serious about poker, one of the things you are probably doing is reading articles on the internet providing strategy and advice. So where do you start? Almost everyone is writing about poker now. Hell I am and have you ever heard of me? Along with the multitudes of blogs, there are numerous poker magazines that publish articles online, many forums where any ol joe can voice his opinion, and of course the personal websites or internet cardrooms of most of the big name poker pros.

It must be intimidating to start sifting through this massive poker database. Hopefully we can help. Along with posting links to articles that we find particularly helpful, I would also like to feature individual authors that for whatever reason stand out from their peers. Me and J both have our favorites and hopefully, over time, we can share them and many others with you.