Hi Everyone:

We have a new book: Bad Beat Therapy; How To Become a Better Poker Player and Person by Dr. Robert Samuels. Here's a link to the Amazon page:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1880685655...s=books&sr=1-1

and here's the "Table of Contents:"

Preface v

About Robert Samuels vii

Chapter One: Introducing Bad Beat Therapy 1
...There is No Poker God 1
...Are you Addicted? 2
...Being Self-Aware 3

Chapter Two: Lying about Lying 5
...The School of Pain 8
...Blame and Shame 9

Chapter Three: Thinking about Thinking 11
...Selling Magical Thinking 11
...Listening to Experts 13

Chapter Four: The Psychological Reasons for the Biggest Mistakes 15

Chapter Five: The Five Essential Bad Beat Concepts 19
...Repression 19
...Addictions and the Pleasure Principle 20
...Magical Thinking 21
...The Reality Principle 22
...Transference 23

Chapter Six: Poker, Emotions, and Non-Reciprocal Information 27
...Blame and Victimhood 28
...Non-Reciprocal Information 30
...Poker Experts and the Information Economy 31
...Group Dynamics 32

Chapter Seven: The Psychopathology of Everyday Players 35
...Narcissism at the Table 35
...Borderline Personalities 36
...Online Poker, Boredom, and Focus 37
...Online Problems 38
...Why You Cannot Sleep 39
...Analysis of a Poker Dream 40

Chapter Eight: Why People Play Irrationally 43

Chapter Nine: How to Overcome Cognitive Biases 47
...Avoiding Missing Information 47
...Group Delusion 49
...Not Knowing What You Do Not Know 51
...Being Negative 52
...Focusing on Results 52

Chapter Ten: Common Bad Advice 55
...Bad Play Syndrome 57

Chapter Eleven: How to Play a GTO No-Limit Hold ’em Strategy 59
...Seeing the Elephant 59

Chapter Twelve: The Psychology of Tournaments 63
Online 64

Chapter Thirteen: What the Brain Sciences Tell Us about Poker 67

Chapter Fourteen: The Psychology of the Player Types 71

Chapter Fifteen: Improving Your Poker Memory 75

Chapter Sixteen: What Makes NLHE Poker Instructional Material Effective 79

Chapter Seventeen: What is Poker Addiction? 83

Chapter Eighteen: Poker Threshold Concepts 87

Chapter Nineteen: Beyond GTO: Why Computers Will Beat Us at Poker 93
...What Does the Solver Want? 94
...From Online to RTA 96

Chapter Twenty: Psychoanalyzing The Biggest Bluff 99

Chapter Twenty-one: Why Losers Continue to Play 103

Chapter Twenty-two: How to Deal with Bad Beats and Coolers 107
...Desensitization 107
...We Need Bad Beats 108
...Understanding Randomness 108
...Selective Memory 110

Chapter Twenty-three: The Curse of Knowledge in Poker and Life 111

Chapter Twenty-four: Debating Malmuth’s Real Poker Psychology — Expanded Edition 115

Chapter Twenty-five: Superstition in Poker 119

Chapter Twenty-six: So Sick!: Advanced Bad Beat Therapy 123

Chapter Twenty-seven: Why You Cannot Improve on Your Own 127

Chapter Twenty-eight: Conclusion: Having the Right Perspective 129

Index 133

The poker gods aren't real?

Death to the blasphemer!

I like mindset books. Ordered.

Hi Mr. Jones:

Thanks for the order. Let us know what you think.

Best wishes,
Mason

About 1/2 way through. Not bad, seems more or less common sense stuff.

I disagree with the part about breath work and mediation, to be disregarded in favor "learning something from the bad beat"

Anecdotally breath work after taking a tough beat, has allowed me to regain control of my A game faster, and thus increase my win rate.

If you get it in with AA vs 22 preflop, and lose huge % of your stack, there's nothing "to learn", you played it correctly. But, if that was on day 7 of a tourney, you're going to feel some pain. If the breath work / mediation helps you numb that out and keep grinding, I'm all for it.

One little tidbit I liked was that you should actually listen to other people's bad beat stories. 99% of the time I nod my head and smile and don't pay attention to the story at all.

However, the author incites that you can gain information from these stories as to how the villain plays. And I like, and agree with that.

I do think that taking a breathe or meditating can help some people in some situations. My main point is that it is also important to process what went wrong after a bad beat.

But I would say the majority of bad beats nothing went wrong....You played the hand correctly, just got unlucky. Majority of bad beats provided you are already a winning player.

Hi Mason. Just bought this book for Kindle. Browsed the first few sections and my only criticism at this point is that the Kindle formatting somehow has left many separate words strung together without spaces in between them all throughout the book. It's annoying trying to read and having to stop every couple of paragraphs to make out 5 words without spaces between them. Hope you can fix this and update it.

Hi bd:

We’re aware of this and hope to have it fixed in 7 to 10 days. Then you should be able to download it again from Amazon.

Best wishes,
Mason

I had to return because the Kindle issues are very bad... unfortunately I haven't read this thread before so I had wait a little longer for a fix

Hi Heavy Mask:

The fix was made today. In our preview, it looked perfect. So, hopefully it'll soon be available to all of those who already bought the kindle.

Best wishes,
Mason

Robert is a lively thinker and a good interview, you can find our talk about the book on the Poker Zoo podcast.

Hi again Mason. The formatting problems are fixed now, but Amazon did not automatically update it. I had to contact customer service and explain to them that you said you made the update on Oct 8, then they figured everything out and updated mine. Not sure about everyone else's.

I know this is off topic of this book but there are 2 other Kindle books by Two Plus Two(I have all of your titles that relate to NLHE in some way) that have issues. Both Harrington on Cash Games Volume 1 and Volume 2 have an issue. Volume 1 is not compatible with Kindle for Android app and Volume 2 can only be downloaded on to one app and no more; so I have it on my Kindle for PC app but it won't let me download it to my Kindle for Android without purchasing it again(Apparently you have to purchase a copy for each Kindle device you want to download it to). So will you please look into the issues with those books as well and see if you can rectify those problems.

Thanks again.

Hi bdwhit:

We'll contact Amazon and see if we can get these issues fixed.

In the beginning of kindles, Amazon did all the conversions. We would send them a hard copy of the book and they would do the conversion. Today, it doesn't work this way but it appears that some of these early kindle conversions now have problems.

Since my responsibilities for this website are now zero, and we think it's in good hands, we have started the process of updating all our books. This includes improving the editing and formatting, correcting type-os, and having the kindle converted by a professional kindle builder. The result will be a book that reads a better and a top notch kindle. In fact, we have already done a number of kindles this way. Two examples of our books that have now gone through this complete process are Bad Beat Therapy by Robert Samuels and Probability and Statistics for 12- Year-Olds (and Maybe You): Plain English Simply Explained, Lessons and Ideas for Students, Gamblers, and Decision Makers by David Sklansky. I also expect to announce a third book that has completed this process very soon (perhaps tomorrow).

Best wishes,
Mason

I have to say I think this is a great book. I think this book will speak to and provide a lot of insights for people that have played poker regularly for a long time. It’s also pretty entertaining and I think a lot of people who play a lot of poker will enjoy it and get something out of it.

I was thinking about the use of HUDs and tracking software earlier and then was browsing this book and happened upon Chapter 19: Beyond GTO: Why Computers Will Beat Us at Poker. I don't know anything much about GTO but what struck me was his discussion of RTAs(Real Time Assistance for those who don't know. I had to look that up).

It got me to wondering why HUDs are not also considered RTA. I guess it is because the information provided by a HUD does not tell you how to make a game play decision and merely gives you information to use in making decisions. But still, a big part of the game in live poker is observing your opponents yourself in real time and trying to gain this information through your own efforts. Of course you can sit there at a live table and take your own notes on your mobile phone or on paper. But this still requires your own effort to collect that information.

I think that people generally accept HUDs because anyone can buy them and use them so there is not an unfair advantage. But that reasoning would hold true if any other form of RTA were available to everyone and allowed as well.

In any case I think that the profit motive is what keeps HUDs from being banned by online cardrooms. It incentivises people to play multiple tables and pay more rake. Without the use of a HUD people would probably not play so many tables as they do. Maybe I'm wrong. Just my thoughts. Perhaps if the online cardrooms could profit from other RTA programs they might allow those as well.

As for the point of Chapter 19, perhaps the robots will win with online poker. Hasn't anyone heard? They're gonna take all the jobs one day.

My bad. I guess since stats from HUDs are based upon previous hands they are not considered RTA. But still.

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I will leave one last idea concerning HUD use and then I am done with the topic.

When I go into a live cardroom from now on I will bring my assistant with me who will be armed with a laptop and who observes and records all the hands at my table and punches them into a program that spews out stats on all my opponents previous hands as the assistant feeds those stats from previous hands to me as I play each hand afterward. That way I can not have to do the work myself of observing tendencies and it will free up mental space for me to focus on other things. If live cardrooms had enough space and our assistants spent enough money on food and booze and tips should such assistants be allowed to help us in this way with our game?

Ok I'm done. Didn't want to derail from the book but Chapter 19 got me thinking.

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And so since I have not been following TwoPlusTwo regularly I find out now that the website was bought a few months ago by Hand2Note, a poker tracking software company with a HUD. lol. Thankfully WSOP.com is coming to Michigan and I won't have to worry about HUDs. And now I can worry about reading good TwoPlusTwo books, and not this website.

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