Mason, have you read What's Luck Got To Do With It? by Mazur?

I spent one minute reading the excerpt on Amazon (I threw my physical copy out a while back when purging various books during a move) and found four typos in the short two-page Introduction section.

Since you think there are none, here they are:

first mention of suppose should be supposed
short- term should be short-term
abut should be about
past should be pass

You're welcome.

No.

Best wishes,
Mason

There's a reason we leave your posts like this up. All these attacks from you only damage yourself.

I will say this. We felt it was very important to get Real Poker Psychology out quickly due to so much bad information that was out there and it seemed like more was coming everyday. I think you're well aware as to what I'm referring to.

With hindsight, I probably should have waited and better explained a few of the many unique ideas (for poker) that the book contains. However, thanks to this website, this has been done, and in our soon to be released book, Poker and More: Unique Ideas and Concepts, some of this is covered as well. And for those of you reading this post, an example of one of the many unique ideas (for poker) is that tilt is a processing problem as opposed to an inability to control emotion that is somehow linked to the "fight or flight" response mechanism that we all have.

MM

You clearly stated in your previous post that the section of the book on Amazon had no typos. That is obviously not true as I found four examples in one minute in the two page introduction. For all I know, there may be more. I just took a quick glance.

Forgive me, but I am not a fan of alternative facts, blatant lies, and my work being taken out of context.

Hi Alternate Identity:

I actually knew English author the late David Spanier fairly well and had coffee with him on a number of occasions when he was in town for the WSOP. My favorite book of his was Total Poker. Here is the Amazon link:

https://www.amazon.com/Total-Poker-H...=David+Spanier

I don't know author John Smith. But I also knew Bob Stupak fairly well. To put it mildly, he was quite a character, and I know, because he told me, that Stupak liked the John Smith book.

Best wishes,
Mason

You need to reread my post. I said

In fact, another poster already pointed out a couple of type-os to me. They shouldn't be there, but getting all type-os out of a book is difficult, and since we did hurry it to press, the risk of type-os went up. After publishing many books over a period of 30 years, I'm well aware what it takes for a book to be well written.

And one other thing, when you visited us in our office during the summer of 2015, we spent time with you going over some of our editing, explained how and why we tightened the language, why it's important not to overuse certain expressions, why you need to be careful about overuse of the word "I" as well as other pronouns, etc., and we did this in an effort to help you with your writing. So you should be well aware how much work goes into the final writing of our books, no matter who the author.

I feel sorry for you.

MM

It's presented as a strategy book about cheating (not just how to protect yourself, also how to do it) - but "Poker: A guaranteed income for life by using the advanced concepts of poker" by Frank Wallace is pretty good fun if you don't take it seriously and read it as entertainment.

The education of a poker player book by Herbert Yardley also mixes strategy and story with more emphasis on the story.

The film Cincinnati kid is based on a book. Has anyone read the actual book? Presumably it was rated highly at one time if it got made into a film with Steve McQueen.

Here's another obscure book that's kind of a fun read. It's titled the Hold 'em Poker Bible; A Poker Classic by Dick Davis with the the last letter of "Hold" and the words "'em" and "poker" written to look like the letter "Y." Here's the Amazon link:

https://www.amazon.com/HoldEm-Poker-...+by+Dick+Davis

What it is is some advice on the left hand page with an appropriate biblical saying on the right hand page. For instance page 92 is:

and on page 93 we have:

I'm not exactly sure how these two statements go together, but apparently they do.

Best wishes,
Mason

I actually have Total Poker and I also have Inside The Gambler's Mind. https://www.amazon.com/Inside-Gamble.../dp/087417242X

Poker and More having a section on this is why I am waiting to post a review. There are things about Real Poker Psychology I disagree with and I want to see if this new book addresses the issues I have.

I have never read The Cincinnati Kid, but just because a book gets made into a movie it doesn't mean the book was any good. Towering Inferno was based on two books and neither are great literature. Jaws is another example of this phenomenon.

It means someone needs wisdom to know what hands to play and when. If a hand is played, it needs to be played strongly.

My issues with Real Poker Psychology deal with more than typos, but as far as typos go, the Mental Toughness section has six instances of missing commas and one instance where a period should have been a semi-colon.

This is based on an excerpt from 2plus2 Magazine.

Although essentially all high stakes no-limit players cite mindset as one of their keys to success (listen to the recent podcast interviews of Negreanu, Rast, Holz, Smith, and Kurganov), it is difficult to say with 100% certainty that, for example, eating healthily and getting sufficient sleep will help you make better decisions. You can say it with a high degree of certainty though, which doesn't seem to be enough for Mason.

However, you can definitively say that when someone confidently states "You will see that the book is well written and not littered with type-0s" when the first two pages have at least four obvious errors (not just missing commas, I didn't mention those because those are subjective), that the person making the statement either has no idea what they are talking about or are trying to deceive their audience. Either way, that person's work should not be taken seriously, especially if they are not well versed in the topic of the book (Mason has stated a few times that he does not play much no-limit, does not play high stakes, and does not play tournaments).

I can't seem to understand why Mason would state that the book is not littered with typos, link to a section that has at least four in the first two pages, and then once they are quickly are pointed out, say that he knew about them. Call me crazy, but I would not say a book is well written if it has multiple obvious mistakes in the first two pages.

True, punctuation is subjective in many cases, but I think the addition of the commas in the places I found would have increased readability. I did not indicate where they were as it would have taken a lot more effort than I wanted to spend in making it clear where they were.

My main problems aren't with the typos, but I am waiting to see if Mason has unknowingly addressed them in his new book before I reveal what they are.

Thx. I think I'll try it.

Thanks, man. I read "A Guaranteed Income for Life by Advanced Concepts..." when I was about 23, and just starting to play fairly serious poker (10-20 to 20-40 limit in those days). I mean who can resist such a title? The man's framework for the "rational" approach, and his language, were so eerily similar to the Objectivist Philosophy movement of Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden, that I was quite sure he was in the movement. I remember confirming that he did live in NYC during those very years, and I believe I confirmed back then that he was indeed involved in Objectivsim. I could try re-reading that. It can be quite interesting to re-read something decades later for sure, in many ways. Thx.

This kind of grammar police stuff is very insignificant in poker literature, imo. We need to avoid glaring typos and punctuate it well enough to not confuse meaning ... and that's plenty. A typo is more along the lines of a misprint than a subtle punctuation error. If you want to pay someone to edit to King's English standards, knock yourself out. I don't see any call for it.

Hi Everyone:

I've always found it amusing how people will sometimes make certain arguments and not understand how indefensible they are. The following is from the "Common Motivational Problems and Their Solutions" chapter in Positive Poker: A Modern Psychological Approach To Mastering Your Mental Game which is a book that you're one of the authors. (The following was written by the Patricia Cardner.)

I've told you on a number of different occasions that I played nothing but no-limit for a number of years when we were working on a number of no-limit books and that I have also played a fair amount of high stakes. But I've never had much interest in playing tournaments.

Here's my response to this. In the "Using Positive Poker" chapter that appears early in the Positive Poker book mentioned above, this statement appears.

Now I read this book on my kindle which is really nice for making notes inside a book's text. And for this book, I have 511 notes. And in the above quote after the word "useful," I have Note No. 39 which says:

This assumes that athletic sports and poker are closely related. However, in poker the execution component is small but large in sports which implies a poor correlation between the two.

and after "(ADD)" I have Note No. 40 which says:

With these issues you should probably seek serious professional help.

Now I'll assume you'll try to tell me that I need a comma after the word "issues" in Note No. 40, but be honest, that's not what you're upset about?

The real problem is that I've been stating with many specifics and with much detail that this poker psychology stuff that you've been promoting has at best very little value. And one of the important reasons for this is present in Note No. 39 above. But I'll state it here for the umteenth time so there is no confusion. Those things that sports psychologists use to help their clients who participate in athletic sports to improve attributes like speed, timing, and coordination will have little value in games like poker where the execution factor is at best small.

MM

The thing is, the question for me as a low stakes player moving up is in terms of mental game issues is: Should I try to model myself on these young stars you list, who see the mental game as a struggle and need to use special techniques to stop themselves from open jamming 10K euros without looking at their cards http://www.onlinepoker.net/poker-new...arcelona/20701

or should I try to model myself on this grumpy middle-aged guy who asks incredulously:

Now, around the time I first read that quote I'd been through a period of "cash out curse" on my main site and my bankroll there was nose-diving. I have a strict rule to never deposit twice on the same site so my bankroll was actually in single figures.

Now of course there isn't really such a thing as the "cash-out curse", it was a kind of mental game issue which I call "acting tilt". This kind of tilt isn't addressed in Mason Malmuth's book, but in any case his ideas give you the tools to solve it.

After I read the quote above, I put my the rest of my bankroll on 2 tables of NL4 (buying in short) and started simply playing the correct moves and not the tilt moves. Obviously as a part timer I don't have a decent sample size but fwiw in cash from that time till end of 2016 I have done:
NL4 18.44 BB/100 over 12100 hands
NL10 8.78 BB/100 over 17996 hands
Turbo SNGs average ROI 4.32% over 3100 SNGs.
(all figures pre-rakeback)
I've continued winning in 2017 and have recently moved up to 25 euro SNGs.

Obviously, compared with where I was, I've had to put in work on my game in order to be able to beat today's low stakes online games pre rakeback, but I'd also credit part of it to listening to the guy who expects me to always make the best move (within the bounds of my knowledge) rather than the people who don't expect me to do that.

As I have said, my issues are much, much more than typos.

I just did the thing about typos in reaction to what Mason said about the book not being littered with typos.

And simple editing is far from doing it to King's English standards. What I did was simple editing.

...Aren't psychologists professionals? And why can't they be serious help?

The thing is the mental game coaches I have read do not discount the execution side and they expect you to know the game and they say knowing is more important than the mental side.

To put another way, to them the mental game is the cherry on top of the sundae while Mason has the mistaken impression that the mental games coaches think they are the sundae.

In buttressing my upcoming argument that Mason is wrong on three things, I will cite three sources (one for each issue) and none are people known for being on the opposite side of Mason. Two sources will be VERY shocking.

On an unrelated note, may we get posts unrelated to underrated books moved to some kind of poker psychology book thread?

Not sure how a book six years in the making can be considered to be hurried to press. You first announced the book in 2009 thread devoted to Elements of Poker. Also, many of the essays seem to be reprints of earlier published works.

On your recommendation, I have found a source and have it on order.

Mason,

You have done a great job of not actually replying to anything in my most recent post despite typing a lot of text.

As I stated, it is not possible to definitively prove that eating right/sleeping well/etc. helps with making better decisions. That said, it is obvious that it does help to anyone who has ever made a thoughtful decision.

In my opinion, playing one hour of $5/$10 live cash games at Bellagio each day for three years does not count as a large amount of high stakes no-limit experience. Perhaps you think it does. In my mind, that would be like me saying that I am a super high roller reg whereas in reality, I have only played 8 $25,000 events, 1 $40,000 event, and 1 $100,000 event. I have experience, but I am not a reg. I would certainly not feel qualified to write a book on beating super high roller events.

You completely ignored the fact that you said your book was not littered with typos, I pointed out four non-subjective ones (again, I purposefully did not point out commas) in the first two pages, and then you said that you knew they were there. So at some point there you either forgot that the first two pages had four mistakes or you tried to lie to deceive your audience. Either way, it doesn't look good. I am not sure how citing sections of my book address the four mistakes in the first two pages your book.

You have repetitively stated the same one paragraph response over and over that poker does not require speed, timing and coordination. I am pretty sure the people who have read this thread know your opinion on this already. Thanks for stating it again, though.

As stated by myself and the other mindset experts over and over, developing a great mindset will not make you great at poker. It will however give you an edge over players who are equally skilled. Obviously significant time should be spent getting good at poker. I am not sure if you are aware, but the vast majority of my content is on developing a fundamentally sound strategy. No one is saying that if you eat healthily and sleep well that you will all of a sudden start winning if you have no clue how to play a fundamentally sound strategy. This is another clear example of you taking our work completely out of context.

It would be appreciated if you would stop taking our work out of context.

That said, I realize you live in America, own a website, and own a publishing company, so you are free to write and say whatever you want, whether or not it is true and accurate. I also realize that some readers are not looking for true and accurate information. Those readers are not my audience. I try to save them from their ignorance whenever possible (as noted by my presence here) but at some point, it must be accepted that they are lost causes.

That's not what the text of mine you bolded was about.

My point is, regardless of the extent it matters, isn't Mr "if you knew the [move] was bad before you made it, why would you ever make the [move] at all?" a much better anti-tilt role model for someone like me coming up than Mr "blind shove 10K euros because you don't like a floor ruling" as well as all the other people who basically think this mindset stuff is something to struggle with?

And yes maybe I had a mental game issue in Sept 2015 during my downswing, and maybe it's one MM doesn't write or know about; adopting his mentality was still the cure though.

Essentially all of the best players in the world work hard to develop fundamentally sound strategies at and away from the table, and implement them better than almost all other players. I know that I spend multiple hours per day studying and developing my game, and I am still far from what I consider to be "optimal".

Even the best players in the world are still human. Most of them play well 99% of the time, but even then, they lose their minds occasionally. Some lose their minds in subtle ways and others go off the deep end. When things are going really poorly for me, I tend to tighten up a bit. While this reaction to "tilt" is likely the least destructive response, it is still worse than playing fundamentally sound. I have worked hard on this issue, but I am aware that it still subconsciously creeps in when I am at my weakest. I also know that when I play 16 tables at once that I gloss over "standard" spots and do not give them much thought, whereas if I spent additional time making my decision, I would have perhaps found a better option.

If you assume that if you know a strategy well that you will implement it perfectly at all times, you are fooling yourself. Also keep in mind that no one knows optimal poker strategy. Those are are better focused will devote more time to studying and will improve faster than their peers.