lol, anyone criticizing clearly only read the title.

It's a well written excerpt, sounds like the book is solid.

Somebody earlier said this but it's worth reiterating for the people nitpicking the title. Editors usually write story headlines for online outlets. Writers write the content. They oftentimes don't even see the headline before the story runs.

Listened to her on some podcast appearances. She seems very sharp and humble. Best yet, she's introducing poker to a totally new audience. I'm looking forward to reading the book.

+1

The excerpt itself is what got me to put in my order. Definitely looks like a great read.

Yeah, I just pointed out it's silly name for an article, which gives totally wrong idea what tournaments are about. Of course I understand the marketing side of it. It will make more money this way, but for a tournament professional it's a silly name for obvious reasons. Winning one tournament and calling yourself champ. Okay.. In the end, it's just marketing.

To me it's silly, to people who have no idea of MTTs it's probably fine.

The article is well written that is why I am baffled she makes such a mistake as to say that Seidel had a set of queens versus Johnny Chan when he infact had top pair with a 7 kicker. That is a huge mistake in the article

Great article and looking forward to reading the book. Sounds like she’s done a great job of portraying poker in a positive light for a more broader audience. And it’s even better coming from her because she’s already an established, and highly-successful author in the public’s eye. Good for the game in every aspect.

Don’t understand the criticism - many great books have small errors or slight exaggerations on details to make things more interesting.

Her book that the excerpt is from is titled The Biggest Bluff. As someone mentioned the editor chooses the article headline, not the author.


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Finally got around to reading the article.

Very enjoyable even though it was written for non-poker players. Anything that brings in more players is good and this would not only do that but also encourage more women to give it a try.

The brief mention of the names and complaints men have thrown her way is also illustrative of the added stuff women have to deal with in addition to the normal table shade.

Good stuff.

That got me too, I had to search the hand to make sure I remembered it correctly. For some reason there are plenty of recaps of the hand but I couldn’t find the video.

Okay, now we are High Stakes Poker...didn´t take long

Who will portray her in the movie?

This explains a lot, because if Seidel had had a set of Qs then he wouldn't be guilty of being "trapped" by Chan. That'd just be a cooler.

At risk of derailing the thread; losing with top pair short stacked and heads up is still a cooler. This is only a special hand because the hot girl in rounders said it was.

News media is biased towards sensationalism and laziness. It happens everywhere it’s just easier to spot when you are an expert in a topic.

LOL

He wasn't trapped anyway like it was presented in Rounders. Seidel was value betting.

It's amazing to have a legitimate educated person be an ambassador for the game.
This will be a great book, but it will not reach outside of poker circles

I'm not sure why you believe that. The author has a pretty wide following as a book and magazine writer completely outside of poker.

The books is currently listed as the #29 best selling book on Amazon overall.

It is obviously the #1 book in the "card games" category, but also the #1 book in "cognitive psychology" and "business decision making".

I don't know where you are seeing "#29 best selling book on Amazon overall".
I am seeing #219 right now.

That is only because its new and popular, been on TV and people are touting it on Twitter.
In a month or 2, it will be #500 or much higher.

edit:
Ok, it is different for the hard cover book. I never look at that anyway. I only do kindle books for many years.

OK, but don't you think this is how most popular books become popular?
When was the last time a poker book had this much mainstream attention?

Hi parison:

This is a subject I know a little about. A sales rank of 500 still means a lot of books are being sold. The real answer will be what happens to the book over time. Some best sellers are done after six weeks, others can have good sales for much longer.

Best wishes,
Mason

Here's the passage from the Atlantic magazine article people have been criticizing as inaccurate:
"This is the most famous poker match in the nonpoker world, in which Seidel’s set of queens falls to Chan’s straight, after the older player sets an expert trap for his less experienced victim."

Here's the corresponding passage in Maria Konnikova's book The Biggest Bluff:
"The most famous poker match in the non-poker world. Seidel's queens falling to Chan's straight—an expert trap for an unwitting victim."

There are numerous differences, some minor (like getting rid of the hyphen in "non-poker"), some more substantial (like changing "Seidel's queens" to "Seidel's set of queens" and changing "unwitting victim" to "less experienced victim").

How did this happen? I can only speculate. The publisher wants to publish an excerpt in a magazine around the time the book comes out to drum up interest. The publisher sends uncorrected galley proofs to a handful of magazine editors, and the Atlantic secures the right to publish an excerpt. An Atlantic editor selects certain passages from the book, rearranges them, and massages the prose to make these snippets work as a stand-alone magazine piece. In fact, multiple editors may be involved in this process of selection, massaging, and copyediting; probably one of them made this erroneous change. Maybe the author saw the Atlantic excerpt before it went to press; maybe not. But if this change wasn't specifically called out for her approval, it could be easy to gloss over it—especially if it's been six months or a year since she wrote that passage.

My point is, give her a break. She's a top-notch writer. And she got Seidel's hand right in her book. And this does look to be a book, like Positively Fifth Street, that will appeal to poker players and non-poker-playing readers alike. I look forward to reading it soon.

Mods please ban this guy he clearly has way too much common sense, insight and intelligence for these forums.

I've sent a notice to The Atlantic notifying them of their set of Queens error. I hope that they can soon correct this travesty.

cliffs: middle aged guy who has spent an entire life mastering poker offers free coaching to attractive woman, teaching her to beat tournaments that have profit ceiling of $20/h, then stakes her in big buy in tournaments and she rolls the dice over a trivial sample size.

whether she was actually profitable and/or whether eric got a BJ out of it? tbd

the funny thing is she's likely down a considerable amount of money at live tournaments (over what is an admittedly trivial sample size). there's a lot of ambiguity because we have no idea what percent of the tournaments that she played in were cashed in, but if it was 15 to 20% (which is to say there are 5-6 buyins at each stake for every cash) her buyins would add up to around 400-600k while she's only cashed for 300k.

granted most of the buyins would be from the 10ks and 5ks that she played in and she may well have cashed in 30-40% of them, in which case her buyins would only be in the ballpark of 200k, but even in that extremely optimistic scenario - with tax implications and costs associated with travel/hotels, she'd for sure be down money and probably quite a bit.

I don't have any issue with her writing about her experiences but the idea that we should venerate her because it will encourage more people to take up poker...

it's good for people who're making money at poker. probably not so good for the people will end up spending time and losing money because they've been fed an unrealistic portrayal of their chances of success.

The hostility on this topic is truly baffling. I can only speculate as to true motivation behind some of these posts. It was an entertaining little yarn in a magazine, coming from a book that's probably a nice, relaxing diverting read. Hope she makes a few bucks off it, the publishing world is brutal. Why the attacks? Nvm, I don't really care.