Hi Everyone:

This is the current cover design contest sponsored by Two Plus Two Publishing, LLC (“Two Plus Two”). It is planned for our next book, Further Limit Hold ’em; Exploring the Model Poker Game by Philip Newall.

All cover designs should be posted below in this thread for forum posters to see and comment on. Along with the design being published on the cover of the above mentioned book, the winner will be awarded a cash prize of $500.00, instant star status, and ultimate bragging rights throughout the Two Plus Two Community. In addition, we will be awarding some other prizes, mostly Two Plus Two Publishing shirts and/or Two Plus Two books to winner up’s as we see fit.

To help with the design, some additional information:

● Further Limit Hold 'em is divided into three sections. They are: Part One: Game Theory, Part Two: Peeling the Onion, and Part Three: Hand Analyses.

Contest rules and other necessary information is supplied below.

Best wishes,
Mason


CONTEST RULES:


1. The contest is open to any artist, graphic designer or photographer (amateur or professional) with a current user account on the Two Plus Two website, excluding employees of Two Plus Two and their families. Vendors and suppliers or their employees are not excluded.

2. Deadline for submission is 11:59 p.m. Pacific Standard Time October 31, 2012. Any submissions posted in this thread after this time and date will not be considered for the competition. The design must be complete and capable of reproduction as submitted. Defective or incomplete files will be disqualified.

3. Each contestant may enter as many cover designs as they wish. The final design may include drawings, paintings, photographs, graphic designs, mixed media, slides, prints, or digital based images.

4. If your submission is selected for use as a cover or for one of our other prizes, we will then ask you to provide us your name, address, phone number, e-mail address and other pertinent information. We may also ask you to list details on how and where the design was conceived and created, and where any photographs were taken (if a photgraph(s) was used). In the event any identified person or location is included in the submission, it will not be considered unless the required Releases, we approve, were obtained in advance of the submissions creation. Feel free to elaborate on any story surrounding the design entry.

5. If your design is selected, we may require you to send it to Creel Printing in the appropriate form and format that they need and at their required resolution of at least 300 dpi resolution.

6. Low-end photographic color prints normally do not produce well enough for reproduction as a book cover. Computer generated photographs that are grainy or show pixilation will not be accepted for judging. Do not submit a cover design which may have been digitally manipulated by adding objects. Manipulation of exposure, cropping and some color correction is acceptable. It is not acceptable to remove or add features to an existing image.

7. All design entries must be related to the poker and/or gaming industry, and should be consistent with the title theme of the book. Themes or subjects in the design may include any location or landscape — as long as the design is obviously related to poker or gaming in some way. Other than this requirement, Two Plus Two encourages all contestants to be creative in their entries. Two Plus Two reserves the right at its sole discretion to reject and disqualify any designs that are considered inappropriate, offensive or which may require other clearances.

8. All submissions must be the original creative work of the submitter. The submitting creator also certifies that the materials submitted are their creation have never been registered as copyrights, or, if copyrighted that the creator is the original and current copyright owner. The submission of any public domain or clip art images is prohibited.

9. All submissions that are accepted to be used on any of our book covers or which receive other prizes become the property of Two Plus Two Publishing, LLC, which shall have the exclusive right to publish and reprint the image commercially in its publications and on the Internet.

10. Upon selection of any submission the contestant shall assign Two Plus Two Publishing, LLC all copyright moral rights and other intellectual property rights in each submitted design that is selected. Two Plus Two will remain in possession of all copyrights or other intellectual property rights of all submitted designs that are selected for usage, and such rights will not revert to the contestants at the close of the competition if their work is selected.

11. Any contestant that fails to follow the contest rules shall be automatically disqualified and barred from future participation.

12. It is the sole responsibility of the submitting creator to obtain a written release from any clearly identifiable person or privately-owned business location in a design which includes a photograph.

13. Post your contest entries in this thread below.

14. Judging will be by conducted by Mason Malmuth and Mat Sklansky of Two Plus Two Publishing. All decisions of the judges are final.


PHOTOGRAPHED LOCATION RELEASE FORM
Location Release Form for “Two Plus Two Cover Design Contest”


Name of Contest Participant (herein called Participant”): _________________

Name of Property Owner/Agent (herein called Licensor"): _________________

Licensor hereby grants to Participant, and its employees and agents permission to enter upon and use the premises located at ________________________________ and all signs, fixtures, and other personal and real property on and around said premises (all of which, together with said premises, shall be referred to herein as the "Property") for the purpose of still photography and design in connection with the production, exhibition, advertising and exploitation of the Two Plus Two Cover Design Contest (herein called the “Contest”).

Two Plus Two Publishing, LLC, ("Two Plus Two”) as the sponsor of the Contest, will have the right to use the results of all still pictures and designs made hereunder in all media in perpetuity, and neither Participant, Licensor nor any tenant, or other party now or hereafter having an interest in said Property, shall have any right of action against Two Plus Two or any other party arising out of any use of said still pictures and designs, in accordance with this Agreement.

Two Plus Two may at any time elect not to use the Property, in which case none of the parties shall have any obligation hereunder. Licensor warrants that Licensor is the owner or authorized agent for the owner of the Property and that Licensor has full authority to enter into this agreement and grant the rights herein granted. In no event shall Licensor or its successors and assigns, or any other party now or hereafter having an interest in said Property seek or be entitled to injunctive or other equitable relief against Two Plus Two or Participant.

This is the entire agreement. This agreement cancels and supersedes all prior negotiations and undertakings relating to the Property and contains all of the terms, covenants, conditions, representations and warranties, written or oral, of the parties hereto in the premises. No other authorization is necessary to enable Two Plus Two to use the Property for the purposes herein contemplated.

Licensor (type or write name): _____________________

(Signature): ______________________________

Property Address: ____________________________________________

Date:_______________________

Participant (type or write name): ______________________
(Signature):_______________________________

Date:_______________________


Photographed Individual Release Form


For the valuable consideration received, I hereby grant to ________________
(“Photographer/Creator”) the absolute and irrevocable right and unrestricted permission in respect of photographic portraits or pictures that he/she had taken of me or the privately-owned location I represent, in which I or the privately-owned location may be included with others to copyright the same, in his/her own name or otherwise; to use, re-use, publish, and republish the same in whole or in part, individually or in any and all media now or hereafter known, and for any purpose whatsoever without restriction as to alteration or assignment; and to use my name, or the privately-owned location's name, in connection therewith if he/she so chooses.

I hereby release and discharge Photographer from any and all claims and demands arising out of or in connection with the use of the photographs, including without limitation any and all claims for libel or invasion of privacy.

This authorization and release shall also inure to the benefit of the heirs, legal representatives, licensees, and assigns of Photographer, as well as, the person(s) for whom he/she took the photographs.

I am of full age and have the right to contract in my own name or in the name of the privately-owned location I represent. I have read the foregoing and fully understand the contents thereof. This release shall be binding upon me and my heirs, legal representatives and assigns.

Name (Print):____________________________
Address:__________________________________________ ___________
Privately-owned location (if applicable):____________________________
Phone: ______________________
Email: ______________________
Signature: ________________________________________
Date: ____________________________________________


Cover Specs


Recommended specs for cover design for 2 plus 2 books. Book size is 5.5 x 8.5. Please allow for .125 inch bleed over the trim size, where the image is extended. Make sure type is a minimum .125 inch away from trim. Allow for a minimum spine size of 1 inch. Will be adjusted by the printer after final page count. Here are the file format we accept:

In Design Native Files up to CS6

Quark for the Mac up to Quark 8

Illustrator up to CS6 for the Macintosh

All Photoshop applications for both Mac and PC

All Corel Draw files must be saved as CMYK and Illustrator eps or ai file

All Freehand files must be saved as illustrator ai or eps file with type converted to outlines

* ALL fonts used in the file(s) must be supplied, including embedded fonts used in creating Illustrator and Freehand EPS files. Unless the text has been outlined.

* EPS and TIFF format image files.

* Image resolution of 300 or higher on all CT images

* Layered Photoshop files if revisions might be necessary.

* All necessary links for your layout documents (TIFF, EPS, BITMAP, PICT etc.)

I thought it might help if I wrote a short description of the book's main themes:

“Even for games with simple and well-defined rules, such as chess and Go, we do not know the optimal strategy. Nevertheless, we know what a good outcome is. In these situations, “as if ” optimization can only be achieved when the real situation is changed and simplified in a mathematically convenient way so that optimization is possible. Thus, the choice is between finding a good heuristic solution for a game where no optimal one is known, and finding an optimal solution for a game with modified rules. That may mean abandoning our study of chess in favor of tic-tac-toe.”

– Gerd Gigerenzer


The idea of developing a richer set of mental models lies at the heart of my new book. A model is just some simplified representation of the game to guide your play. Unless you're playing randomly or making things up as you go along, you must be playing according to some mental model(s). This is most obvious with GTO players who put a lot of work into one specific model of unexploitable play, but it's also true for exploitive players as a set of rules of how to play against certain opponents and how to react to new information.

Computers also learn to play poker (and other games) by developing models. They do this by creating a simplified version of the game, then finding the optimal strategy for this game which would take too long to do for actual limit hold 'em. Every year the bots create more complicated models which hopefully – although this isn't guaranteed – get them closer to a perfect GTO strategy.

Bots have an advantage in that their models can be much more complicated than our (mental) models. But we have other advantages, such as being able to use judgment and experience to switch between many different mental models. This might make us better at beating inferior opposition. And it might also help us minimize losses against better players, as having a totally static strategy allows for much greater potential exploitation.

There are many things that we do to create our mental models. Strategies that totally exclude certain options, e.g. raise-or-fold preflop, are very common. They simplify your strategy by artificially removing parts of the game tree. There are postflop counterparts too, such as checking to the raiser and continuation betting as the preflop raiser (both in- and out-of-position). These rules greatly simplify the task at hand, and they work well for most situations. But part of this book is me trying to develop a richer set of mental models to see if there are certain situations where they perform reliably poorly. Some simplifications are better than others.

Lots of players start reading about the GTO approach and then get excited about something like, “solving their river play.” Part of the problem is that this is much too hard a task. You could only achieve such a solution under restrictive assumptions about ranges or other modelling assumptions that are unlikely to generalize to actual poker. I think a more practical method is to work on building models that you can understand and that also share more features of real poker. In this case I'm giving up on searching for the “best” strategy, settling for one that is merely “better.”

The model I'm most excited about is a description of flop texture. Different flops lead to different post-flop situations, and are a potential reason to look at more complicated strategies (e.g. that include donk-betting on the flop). But there's no way we can develop a unique plan for all 22,100 different flops, or the 1,755 strategically different flops after accounting for suit isomorphisms (e.g. where 5c5d6d is treated the same as 5h5s6s). My model of flop texture focuses on just two dimensions: the average rank of a flop's cards (where AcAdAh is very high, and 2c2d2h is very low) and also a flop's potential for draws (where the three of a kind flops would lead to very few draws, while a flop like 5s6s7s has many). Ranking flops in this way can lead to a 3x3 mental grid, where flops can be either high, average, or low on both rank and draw potential. This is a much simpler way of depicting different flop textures, but I also show that both factors have a statistically reliable influence on the preflop raiser's equity share, and this can make it much easier to spot situations where we need to introduce more complexity to our strategy.

A word on the title: hopefully this book will throw up some interesting ideas for limit hold 'em players specifically. But I also believe that limit hold 'em can serve as a useful model for players of games with more complicated betting rules (e.g. No-Limit). Unlike my last book this one doesn't specifically discuss other games, but some of the ideas, e.g. flop texture's influence on continuation betting and checking to the raiser (or not) should be very applicable. Even for purely exploitive players I hope these models will be useful as a way of reducing the informational burden from playing this way in the face of our limited cognitive abilities.

Mason posted the long official version. Here's a few things to know and help you get started:

First, here's a rough template you can download (Photoshop .psd format, 15MB). It includes the twoplustwo logo, the pile of chips image*, the placeholder for the UPC, and so on.

Tips:

• Don't worry about the UPC code, they'll take care of that at the print shop. The placeholder white image is there for you.
• The spine width will vary somewhat, so have a bigger (or at least wider) background image available. Normal spine width is about 1", but it can be a good bit more.
• The pile of chips image is on every twoplustwo cover. I don't like it either and Mason never did tell me why it's there. My suggestion is to find a place for it, even color it if you want. If you don't, the print shop will, and you may not like the results as much.
• Leave a lot of room on the back cover for text. 2p2 likes using a ton of verbiage back there compared to most. I've tried to get them to cut it down to a more standard 150 or 170-ish words, and I failed.
• If you're just a novice Photoshop hack, like me, then just leave it in Photoshop format, Creel Printing will work with it. All text other than large titles (and preferably even that) should be as text, not rasterized. Leave all the layers in place.
• You don't necessarily need the title on the back cover, in fact others who do this sort of thing for a living suggest that's bad practice. I always did it anyway, but I have no idea what I'm doing.
• Don't place anything too close to the edges, especially text. An eighth of an inch is fine.
• It helps to have a decent IPS monitor, properly calibrated. Colors don't look quite right on regular displays... now that I do, my old covers all look different.
• Use your own images, not licensed stuff. That works for other publishers and I've recommended it, but no dice here. You'll have to come up with your own photos or drawings or whatever. You can, however, use Bee playing card images.
• The fonts on the back for the slogans at the bottom can be whatever, and how they're laid out isn't set in stone.
• Mason likes his colors bright and Vegas-y, and given two choices, he will rarely choose the blue one

Good luck. If you have any easy questions I'll try to answer. IMO if you can come up with a strong background image the rest is cake.

Hey guys, I have a quick question here just to clarify things. Would be glad if I'd get an answer.

So basically I am not allowed to add objects from multiple images together. Say a poker table and chips on top. Also I am not permitted to blend together say 3 images with different felt colors or such? I feel like this rule limits my ideas a lot thats why I'd like some secondary confirmation.
I have to use one picture/drawing/digital art made by me. Right?

Thanks for your time reading this,
RTT314

I believe if you photograph some friends playing poker, you can't photoshop yourselves into the WSOP or heavily manipulate the image into something it's not. Even with an author image there's questions about this and that, in fact I remember one conversation about Dan Harrington's baseball cap with the Red Sox logo. I'd definitely wait for Mason's answer but photos are a little trickier then things you draw up.

Well played, Gonso.

I don't intend to enter (although I love dicking around with Photoshop etc).

Pretty cool, though, that you'd offer advice like this to those who are going to enter.

I'm assuming you will be entering, and given your outstanding efforts to date, have a decent chance of winning.

Again, nh Sir.

Hi Everyone:

I think Gonso has this correct.

As an example, we were once looking at a book cover that had some Binion Horseshoe chips on them. To use this picture, we had to get permission from Harrahs, who owned Binion's at that time, so instead we changed the chip image to 2+2 chips and then it was fine.

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi RTT314:

Yes, the picture/drawing/digital art needs to be your own work. Years ago we were considering a cover design only to discover another poker book had just come out with the same picture. It had been purchased from a commercial site, but fortunately we saw it soon enough and were able to go with something else.

Best wishes,
Mason

Definitely gonna submit something for this. Do more of these!

Thanks - a small chance I submit something but my schedule probably isn't going to allow it. Since I can't promise anything and Mason has a schedule to keep, it's a good time for a contest. And really I've done plenty anyway and a fresh look is probably in order. That either means someone else, or I have to get better and learn how to use all this software I bought at some point.

Phil, when is the book coming out?

Should be before the end of the year.

Nice, looking forward to it very much. Even though I don't play LHE anymore, but I still find it very interesting, especially HU. Would you analyze some hands from the winner Slumbot at ACPC this year?

In...
expect some designs from me.

Any examples from previous winners (if there are any)?

Mason, what is your level of comfort with derivative works and fair use? For instance, say I wanted to use pieces from different sources for a mixed media collage (e.g., a piece of an old playing card, part of a page from an old math text).

Just look at every 2+2 book cover for the past several years (since at least No Limit Hold 'em: Theory and Practice).

There are also threads that you can search for in this forum.

This is about copyrighted images, so if you do take something from another site (as long as it is not an image of a brand/company/person) it is fine.

To use another example as the chip's, say I use a picture of a general building (like a storage building), then add a custom neon sign that says "Two plus Two Casino) and take the sky from another picture to add it in the background, that would be ok?

This would not even be related to the book, but it is a very clear example, is this wrong or ok ?

The last twoplustwo contests held for these go back a ways, but the most recent 3 winners were Sit N' Go Strategy, Harrington on Cash Games (by other people), and Professional No-Limit Hold'em (mine). I didn't have very much experience at all at the time, and just kind of wound up doing a bunch more. Examples here (a couple missing/links dead, sorry)

In fact I remember when I entered initially, Mason said he liked mine, but at the last day or two of the contest said they were too dark for consideration (which they were). I just about tossed it but decided to change it up to something brighter, got picked, and next thing I know I've done a bunch with different publishers, and I talked to a couple more I didn't wind up doing anything for.

So I really can't stress enough that anyone thinking about it at least try and enter something, regardless of experience. Ready to see some pictures in the thread though gogogogo

Where can we get those bee card images from? Any way you can link us to a psd version? That would be greatly appreciated.

Here's my first quick attempt, not done a book cover before. Finding it very difficult!

I was trying to convey some sort of exploration with the front cover, not sure if that comes through or not though?

Any thoughts or criticism?

Btw I wasn't sure whether I should change that bit on the back or not (you'll notice it's the same as the PSD provided). Let me know if that shouldn't be used and I'll make something else.

and an entry emerges!

Chaos and Fractales... I can see where you are going here.

This chips need to be on the front, as does the price - actually double check w/ Mason, but I believe those are his preferences. Title should go on spine, author's name too, at least the last name. You don't have near the room on the back you'll need when Mason drops a wall of text on you. And he will.

As far as the stuff on the back, feel free to change those fonts, colors, layout. The chrome "twoplustwo" was from Harrington Online Cash, but I've done that differently. I suggested Mason stick a QC code on there (2p2 link) also, maybe find room for that? Usually he likes author photo(s) on the back, or at least I think so, since that's always been how it's done. Maybe not.

But whatever you want to do, it's your cover. If MM thinks it doesn't work he'll say so. Just don't mess with his 2p2 logo, and make sure the apostrophe in "hold 'em" is in the right direction (yours is).

As far any real criticism, you've got a lot of fonts going on. I've done the same before so I'm not really one to talk, but it can look a little all over the place. Also, try every font you own. When you highlight text in PS, click on the font name in the menu so it turns blue, and use the up and down arrow, you can scroll through easier/quicker and see your options.

I like the dark wood background but it's hard to see without looking close up. You could grey/lighten it up a bit maybe to make it more visible. Or invert it and see what that looks like.

Something is wrong with the 2p2 logo on the back. Look close at the bottom of the cards, maybe the layer go duplicated and the two layers on top of one another? Sorry if I did that.

But you've got a functional poker book cover. Now screw with it a bunch and save your steps as full PSD files in between! I suggest numbering the saves as you go to keep track.

I prefer not to critique the other works for the most part at this early point... design by committee is extremely ineffective in producing good results. Look for solid submissions first... once you narrow down your ideas/choices, refine them a slightly and then abc the finalists. After you pick a winner, you can massage as much as you want to a final/finished result.

listening to non designers for creative perspectives will be a giant waste of time.

for this first submission, the idea worth talking about is using fractals as a basis for communicating the authors ideas.