If your mind is too literal, your brain will find the discontinuity to be irrational and pointless.

This explains why women are totally oblivious to humor like the 3 Stooges.

If you always only ever focus on making the correct decisions in poker you will win and you won't tilt. That doesn't mean you won't feel frustrated etc but that is basically the sum of it.

By the way, I agree that Tommy Angelo's post was a very classy and dignified response. I am impressed.

The above quote comes across as pompous and arrogant. You never cease to amaze. I suggest you go back to arguing about AQ being better than JJ in a no limit game. http://archives1.twoplustwo.com/show...n=&page=0&vc=1

I think I need to go read Element of poker again because I am tilting and am logically disconnected. Unless of course you have another penguin joke....

I did not accuse you of attacking Tommy Angelo's work but other posters have been less than polite in relation to it.

Thanks for the insult, but as stated, my reviews are based on what the book says. Nothing more and nothing less. They are provided to help steer our readers towards that material which we view as good and away from what we view as questionable (at best).

If your opinion is different you are welcome to state so on these forums and to give your reasons why you feel differently. We welcome and encourage vigorous debate. But we also require that you post in a professional manner.

MM

Mason,

I understand, I was mostly disagreeing with the premise that educating ones self on what are acceptable variances is enough to control tilt.

We are dealing in the realm of emotional reactions, when we talk about tilt.

When a soldier goes into battle he must be trained and habituated to react contrary to normal emotions, because all the "understanding" in the world is useless and will go straight out the window when one is faced with "the gun" shoved in their faces.

One must practice, train and habituate the desired reactions, if one is to have lasting control.

I am reiterating that INSIDE THE POKER MIND is a great book and extremely helpful with tilt. The author is a physiologist who was also an expert poker player.

One can think of 'tilt' as anything that happens when you very much would like one outcome, something different happens, and it causes an emotional reaction which negatively alters your behavior. Often this is tied to some sense of either injustice or self-anger.

Someone cuts you off when you're driving: you honk your horn and curse.

The person whom you would like to date does not want to date you: your confidence drops.

You make a post on the internet. You want to be respected and liked. Instead, your ideas are disparaged. You are furious at either the other posters who obviously have it out for you personally, or yourself. How could you be so stupid? Why don't you fit in?

I think we can see from Tommy's reaction to Mason's review that he has avoided tilt. Instead of becoming defensive, he reacted in a classy, thoughtful and complimentary way which helps validate the ideas in his book.

I like and respect Mason's book reviews, but I think his assertions of complete objectivity are overstated. It's nearly impossible to stay completely objective, and people tend to really underestimate their own biases. For example, In the past I've felt Mason, obviously a very smart man, has a bit of a tendency to go on a bit of 'internet forum tilt.' Is Ace On The River really a 10 if EOP is a 4? Well, it's possible.

Knowing Tommy, I expect he found it to be a piece of cake.

Question: How long can you stand while holding your arms straight out from your shoulders?

And that helps combatting tilt?

FWIW, I thought Inside the Poker Mind didn't have to offer much in terms of psychology, and The Poker Mindset was very basic. I guess the latter would rate higher on Mason's scale, as there aren't any obvious mistakes in the book, it just didn't contain anything I didn't already know, and it didn't help me avoiding tilt at all, because it was way too technical and lacked psychological insight.

Elements of Poker on the other hand was full of wisdom and helpful even for life away from the poker table. So thanks, Tommy, you have written my all time favourite poker book.

Cyborgs don't need books on psychology.

Awesome thought provoking thread. I hope this debate continues. I respect Mason's review and have been thinking a lot about what he has written here since I first read it last night and think it is really great stuff and will read Gambling Theory... one of only a few of the 2 +2 books I haven't got to yet. I loved Tommy's post and book. I read EOP in one sitting and have reread sections a few times. There are great nuggets to be gained such as an earlier poster mentioned that a sports team having a disadvantage on an away game. What if they were able to choose to not to play certain away games? How would that affect the team's results? I don't believe anthing I've read in EOP has hurt my game (au contraire) but I've read enough other poker books to know that I need to apply concepts from a number of texts in my own percentages to fit the style I believe in while not applying stuff I either disagree with or stylistically don't think will work for me.

Inside The Poker Mind addresses tilt. In fact the author, a psychologist and poker player, spent a lot of time writing about tilt in the book.

Why do you take a baseless and unnecessary shot at my post when you have not read the book, and have unfounded misconceptions?

I have read both books and I found Inside the Poker Mind a much better book then Elements of Poker, including how both books address tilt. I was impressed by Tommy's post, he is probably a terrific guy, but ITPM will help most players work on tilt more then EOP.

If I didn't already have my copy of The Elements of Poker, this thread would induce me to buy it.

It is true that the technical advice is sometimes lacking, but as others have said, the book has consider value to some people -- including me, an almost always logical and rational person with a background in, among other things, mathematics and law. Moreover, besides possibly helping at the tables (this is hard for me to judge), it feels good to read. And the more I learn about the author, the better I feel about it, which certainly can't be said of all poker books -- or even very many of them.

I don't have much of a tilt problem in the classic sense, which may explain why I found Inside the Poker Mind and The Poker Mindset to be less valuable -- but in fact I think the reason is that those two books say nothing of substance that isn't incredibly obvious, while in his book Angelo says only things that ought to be obvious -- but somehow, some of them aren't.

Thanks for the link -- it's an excellent read.

Psychologist or physiologist? Or both? Ah, clinical psychologist, I see.

What gives you the idea I haven't read the book? The fact that I didn't like it?

I have read the book, I just didn't think there was much to gain from it. Atakdog expressed it better than I could.

Also, I'm not particularly interested in exchanging pm's with you. But I'm sure you're right: I need to grow up and Inside the Poker Mind has helped you avoiding tilt. A lot.

I read it, didn't like it. Seemed obvious, trite, and self-evident. maybe I missed the point, maybe I'm a genius, maybe it's my training in philosophy and psychology. IDK.

I felt like he was pointing out issues I alreday knew were important and I was reading the book for advice, and all he did was point out when I knew I needed to fix. Like going to a shrink and saying "I'm depressed" and shrink says "being unhappy is llife -EV so you need to seek happiness."

But, enough ppl here who I respect recommend it so maybe I'll try reading it again. But I was so underwhelmed that I sold my copy - an autographed copy at that.

i remember reading tommy posts on the LHE forum a few years ago. tommy posted how he checked behind pocket aces on the river. everyone said he was nuts, and also commented him on his writing. something like that anyway.

There was some stuff not applicable for internet grinders (i.e. chapters on fast playing strong hands in live play), but overall it was an extremely helpful book for me. I think this book works best for people who have progressed significantly up the ranks but are struggling with the mental side of the poker game. Tommy's thoughts may not be revolutionary, but they are brilliantly written and explained so well that they are much more effective than a lot of the twoplustwo prose. For example, lopping off your c game, then your b game, etc. may have been rehashed ideas about tilt that I had heard before, but it was repackaged so well and in such an innovative way that it stuck with me much more than any of the previous literature on the mental game.

I would highly recommend this book for mid-stakes and above poker players, much like Ace on the River (which I also loved) you are not going to get a ton of strategic advice out of it. It is more of a mental preparation for the game which becomes exceedingly important at the higher limits.

EOP is poorly written. I have no problem with you liking the content, but he desperately needs a good editor.

Many of the early 2+2 books are also poorly written, examples are TOP and HPFAP. Although I loved TOP and HPFAP.

If we are addressing the quality of the writing, EOP, TOP, HPFAP all are poorly written.

I am a fan of Elements of Poker, and would probably rate it ahead of most poker books both in terms of the enjoyment it provides as well as its instructional value (esp. w/regard to its insights into the various emotional/psychological issues of poker). I'm also a sucker for self-effacing humor & wordplay, which I fully understand is not among the qualities many look for in poker books.

That said, it seems to me that by just about any criteria I can imagine, the book is remarkably well written & edited. Like I say, I like the book's content, anyway, so call me prejudiced. But I think even if I didn't care for the content I'd appreciate its form.

I've been wondering about the "bad writing and editing" comments myself. I recently read EoP the second time and was keeping an eye out for that kind of thing based on those comments. I saw a small number of places where I thought the formatting of something could have been improved (not the words or grammer, but the arrangement of something on the page). I've done just enough writing myself to notice some of the things that others don't even think about. (Just enough to be dangerous, not enough to be good.) The glaring kinds of errors that often slip into the first printing of books from the biggest and/or most professional publishers weren't there. All I can think of is that Tommy's "style" would have been polished into extinction were EoP to have been edited by a certain kind of editor. To me, that would have made the book worse, not better.

You and me both brother! I call it the-man-behind-the-curtain syndrome. First I went through it with music. By playing thousands of gigs and recording for thousands of hours, it has become hard for me to "just listen" to a song without hearing the component parts and thinking about the process and all sorts of stuff. And now that I've done a lot of writing and revising, I have the same thing happen sometimes when I read.

Since we're on the topic of editing in general and the editing of my book in particular, here are a few facts. I used seven editors. All of them but one (my wife) are poker players. Six of them did readings of the whole thing, made notes, and then I talked over the notes with them. One editor, who is truly my ace in the hole, Anna Paradox, worked with me practically on a daily basis from start to finish. Because I cranked out the ideas and the first drafts and made the final decisions, I am called "the author." But to whatever extent it is possible for an editor to be a co-writer, Anna was.

You are so right. The part you might not have considered when you wrote that is that I am a revising junkie, and that the editor who was most likely to polish the life right out of any particular batch of text was me! One of Anna's great strengths as an editor was in telling me when a passage was finished.

Tommy